described it as "the worst play I've ever seen on a Broadway stage". Rich's original review stated that "Even Act One of Moose Murders is inadequate preparation for Act Two," and that "I won't soon forget the spectacle of watching the mummified Sidney rise from his wheelchair to kick an intruder, unaccountably dressed in a moose costume, in the groin." In an end-of-season review, he described Moose Murders as "the season's most stupefying flop—a show so preposterous that it made minor celebrities out of everyone who witnessed it, whether from on stage or in the audience." New Yorker art critic Brendan Gill said the play “would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas”. Critic John Simon wrote in a review of the play, "Selective patrons cannot even imagine what horrors reviewers are exposed to, night after nightmarish night." Associated Press drama critic Jay Sharbutt described the play as comprising "a lot of labored skulduggery, frantic slapstick, dashes upstairs, downstairs and sideways, assorted gunshots and half the population of this caper dispatched to a better world, if not better play" and declined to identify the cast "pending notification of [next of] kin". Douglas Watt of the New York Daily News called it an "incredibly sappy murder mystery farce" that shouldn't happen to a moose and said that he had forgotten how it ended, while the New York Posts Clive Barnes said that it was "so indescribably bad that I do not intend to waste anyone's time by describing it." He commended Eve Arden for leaving it before it opened and commented, "Some people have all the luck." Arthur Bicknell has also said that a member of the public, on spotting him in the street, shouted 'Officer, arrest that show!' Moose Murders became a touchstone of reference to be used in other reviews; a 1998 review of the television sitcom Encore! Encore! described the show as "the 'Moose Murders' of sitcoms—it won't be here past Halloween, but the recollection of its awfulness will give you untold delight for years to come." A 1995 production of the play Dracula in Philadelphia has been described as having "taken on legendary-turkey status [among Philadelphia critics] on a par with Moose Murders". Frank Rich himself later wrote in the New York Times (reviewing the 1988 version of Carrie), "Only the absence of antlers separates the pig murders of Carrie from the Moose Murders