The material... is unusual and the cast first-rate.

If Nightmare Alley isn't precisely tasty entertainment, at least it has been colorfully and harshly set forth with better than average character sketches lending it a certain unsavory interest and morbid fascination.

All together the film has a great deal of accumulative impact. It is a thoroughly unpleasant, but salutary picture. It should pull both potential dupes and the potentially ruthless up good and short.

The film retains a queasy kick, not least in its oscillating uncertainty about whether to love or despise its smooth, beautiful leading man for his smoothness, his beauty, and his ambition.