Metacritic reviews

After Carpenter and De Palma, it may seem a little dated; yet Edwards' classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.

With Experiment in Terror, Edwards, working in the familiar genre of criminal depravity, does something that may well be, for Hollywood, unprecedented: he makes a virtual piece of film criticism in movie form.

Edwards' direction is effective, although he relies too heavily on overhead and boom shots to show his action scenes.

Blake Edwards's 1962 film is largely a formal study, a good excuse to explore some offbeat locations in San Francisco (including Candlestick Park at the climax). Nice work, but Edwards has done better.

Blake Edwards' moody suspense thriller captures San Francisco from unexpected perspectives, starting with a dark drive with a perfect noirish Henry Mancini score across the Bay Bridge, and ending with then-new Candlestick Park. [08 Feb 2015, p.D6]

Credit the film’s modest virtues to Edwards’s undeniable verve as a visual stylist. Still, with a running time slightly over two hours, Experiment in Terror is a bit too protracted to count as an unqualified success.

It takes more than two hours to come to a solution of the problem in this film. They would do it in one hour on TV, and it would probably be every bit as good.

The film treatment embraces a number of unnecessary character bits that merely extend the plot and, despite their striking individual reaction, deter from the suspense buildup.