formats. Critical reception The Unknown Terror does not appear to have gotten particularly favorable reviews at the time of its release. BoxOffice in its regular feature "Review Digest" summarized the overall ratings given the film by six publications: The Hollywood Reporter and The Film Daily wrote that it was "good"; Parent's and Harrison's Reports called it "fair"; and Variety and BoxOffice both rated it as "poor." For the magazines that placed the film in the "poor" category, "Kove", writing in Variety after having previewed the film at the studio on July 30, 1957, said it was for "uncritical clientele" and that the direction is "at the elementary level. The Kenneth Higgins script is distinguished only by its moldy quality." BoxOffice offered readers only a brief synopsis of the plot, which noted that Gina and Pete "escape to bring to fruition the love they had always had for each other." The magazine suggested in its "Exploitips" that exhibitors create public interest by having "an aid" from a newspaper, TV or radio station watch the film with an audience and arranging "with a local doctor or psychology teacher to test the person afterward for pulse rate, effects, etc." BoxOffice also recommended decorating the theater lobby with "weird masks and Indian lore, with simulated fungus growing about." The film's financial success varied by location. BoxOffice's "Boxoffice Barometer" measured gross receipts from exhibitors in 1957 in "20 key cities" using a scale on which 100 percent represented normal gross receipts. The magazine reported scores from seven of the 20 cities: Chicago, 200 percent of normal; Denver and New Haven, Connecticut, 100 percent; Detroit, 75 percent; Los Angeles, 55 percent; Pittsburgh, 45 percent; and San Francisco, 40 percent. The average score was calculated at 88 percent. Film critics have disagreed about the film's precise setting, calling it variously Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Dialogue within the film refers to the location only as the "shores of the Caribbean." Much of the critical commentary about The Unknown Terror has focused on the special effects; i.e., the fungus and the fungus-covered man-monsters. Most critics, both at the time of the film's release and later, agree that the fungus looks much like soap suds. Per American film critic Bill Warren, The Monthly Film Bulletin said in its 1957 review that "the fungus looks like gargantuan quantities of good-quality detergent." Warren went on to write himself