"The result is simultaneously awkward and pretentious... Even so, Mr. Baron has some interesting ideas about New York locations, and aided by the expert photography of Erich Kollmar he has made effective use of such settings as the Staten Island ferry, Rockefeller Plaza and the Village Barn night club. The outdoor scenes have a spontaneous vigor that augurs well for the director's future."
- Eugene Archer, The New York Times

"You're the end of the line Blast of Silence. You carry the full weight of film noir's history on your slender shoulders. It must be very loosely. But you suck up your courage and give it a go. And whadya know? You turn out a winner. Yeah, Blast of Silence is most definitely a classic example of what can be done on a low budget."
- The Film Noir Bible

"... offbeat and intense..."
- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

"But for all of its pulp poetry - the picture begins in a railroad tunnel, transformed by the narration into a birth canal that will blast the silently screaming Frankie into the harsh reality of Penn Station - the film retains a down-and-dirty, documentary aspect. The studiously gray, unglamorous views of 1961 Manhattan - St. Marks Place, where Frankie takes a room at the Valencia Hotel; the blanked-out East 30s, where Frankie's mark has a girlfriend stashed in a walk-up apartment - are worth the price of admission alone. Here's what was being left out of those Madison Avenue melodramas and Park Avenue romances of the period."
- Dave Kehr, The New York Times

"... the single greatest feat of voiceover narration in history."
- Matt Prigge, Philadelphia Weekly

"With one foot planted firmly on the Kiss Me Deadly [1955] era of film noir and the other closer to The Killing of a Chinese Bookie [1976], Blast of Silence begins with a brutal, uncompromising invocation of birth and ends with an almost mystically sensitive death... What Blast of Silence gets and gets right is the sense that New York, for all its 'top of the world' potential, is also a working metropolis with accompanying concessions, mediocrities, and isolations."
- Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

"Blast of Silence is possibly the great lost masterpiece of film noir; a twilit, deathward emanation of everything that had underlain the form from its beginnings. No American film before it, made in Hollywood or anywhere else, had trafficked so promiscuously in unadulterated nihilism, or so used the condition of Hate - constant, irritated Hate, with no coherent Other to direct it toward - as its emotional motif."

- Tom Sutpen, Bright Lights Film Journal

"Working with a miniscule budget, Baron creates charged compositions out of found locations and makes a virtue out of the film's cheapness. The soot and litter almost seem summoned by his character's mental state. Established admirer Martin Scorsese could easily have had it in mind when he made Taxi Driver [1976]; Blast of Silence shares that film's tortured philosophizing."

- Keith Phipps, The Onion A.V. Club

"How influential has Allen Baron's Blast of Silence been? Since it was out of circulation for decades, the answer may seem to be 'not very.' All the same, it was a crime film shot on the run in New York City, long before Abel Ferrara gained a name for doing so, and it contains scenes that could prefigure the works of David Lynch."

- Ramsey Campbell, Video Watchdog

"The beautifully executed narration by Lionel Stander is an important part of the film's effect. It provides a running description of the inner life of the character, a man who is comfortable only when he's alone and it's quiet, who has rendered himself unfit for normal discourse....Bleak, dark and strangely arresting throughout, Blast of Silence is not quite a can't-miss proposition, but one comes away from it feeling as if one has seen a minor classic of some kind. Yes, minor - but still a classic."
- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"...fascinating, bleak tale..."
- The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film

"Arguably, Allen Baron's Blast of Silence is one of the very best film noirs in cinema history....the cinematography of Blast of Silence is so outstanding that it turns New York City into a character rather than a mere location. Even though Blast of Silence was Baron's first movie, his professional background as a comic book illustrator gave him a firm understanding of visual concepts such as framing and composition....Considering the brave and elegant aesthetics of Blast of Silence, one is left perplexed at the subsequent filmmaking career of Baron."
- Marco Lanzagorta, www.popmatters.com