his review for The New York Times, praised the film for its "striking, imaginative color photography and deep-freeze pacing and atmosphere" and highlighted the sequence where Amelia is trapped in the park as "spine-tingling", "superb" and "Argento at his chilling best". However, he criticized the plot as "not only old but farfetched" and the dialogue as "banal", and went on to say that "[a]ll that circuitous teasing and those red herrings don't produce a shred of real evidence to nibble on. You're on your own, in pure hit-or-miss speculation." Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review of two-and-a-half stars out of four, deeming it a "badly dubbed and incoherent murder thriller" with "a conclusion that's so arbitrary we feel tricked." He did, however, give praise to Mimsy Farmer and said of her that she "deserves to get some of those Mia Farrow roles." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and wrote, "Argento's script contains more red herrings than the Cape Cod Room. Each time evidence overwhelmingly points to a possible threat to our bushy-haired hero that person is bumped off and the guessing game begins anew. I didn't find that rhythm the least bit entertaining." Variety faulted "a script bogged down with farce comedy, unneeded sex, coarse language and trite dialogue." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film generally "works when nobody's talking and the camera's moving." He thought that several "badly dubbed, broadly burlesqued characters are totally ludicrous and destroy utterly the film's credibility." David Pirie of the Monthly Film Bulletin noted it being "full of slick visual conceits and glossy set-pieces, this is clearly Argento's most expensive and ambitious thriller yet." while stating its still as "flat and predictable as that of the most meager Italian 'B' feature." Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gave the film two stars out of four and opined it was an "[u]nabsorbing psychological murder-mystery with performers who walk through their roles in a very disinterested fashion." Writer Fran Lebowitz, who had a column reviewing bad-movies, told Glenn O'Brien in a 1978 issue of High Times, that, "the worst movie I ever saw was called Four Flies on Gray Velvet, with Mimsy Farmer, one of your great loves. But to this day I have never seen a worse movie." AllMovie gave the film a positive review, calling it "an unfortunately overlooked and