is well up to standard. Mr. Brian Donlevy, as the American scientist responsible for the experiment, is a little brusque in his treatment of British institutions but he is clearly a man who knows what he is doing. Mr. Jack Warner, representing Scotland Yard, is indeed a comfort to have at hand when Things are on the rampage". Positive reviews also came from Peter Burnup in the News of the World, who found that "with the added benefit of bluff, boisterous Brian Donlevy... all earnest addicts of science fiction will undoubtedly love every minute of it", while the reviewer in The Manchester Guardian praised "a narrative style that quite neatly combines the horrific and the factual". Today's Cinema called it "one of the best essays in science fiction to date". Film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck notes a degree of national pride in some of the positive reviews. For instance, Paul Dehn in the News Chronicle said, "This is the best and nastiest horror film I have seen since the War. How jolly that it is also British"! Similarly, William Whitebait in the New Statesman, who found the film to be "better than either War of the Worlds or Them!", also called for "a couple of cheers for the reassurance that British films can still, once in a while, come quick". On a less positive note, Frank Jackson of Reynolds News quipped "That TV pseudo-science shocker The Quatermass Xperiment has been filmed and quitermess they've made of it too", before slating the film as "82 minutes of sick-making twaddle". The horror content of the film was mentioned in several reviews: Patrick Gibbs of the Daily Telegraph said the film "gives the impression that it originated in the strip of some horror comic. It remains very horrid and not quite coherent", while the reviewer in the Daily Mirror found the film to be "a real chiller thriller but not for the kids" and Dilys Powell of The Sunday Times found the film "exciting but distinctly nauseating". Another unimpressed critic was François Truffaut, who wrote in Cahiers du cinéma that "This one is very, very bad, far from the small pleasure we get, for example, from the innocent science fiction films signed by the American Jack Arnold... The subject could have been turned into a good film, not lacking in spice; with a bit of imagination... None of this is in this sadly