Stalker (1979 film) of the "Time Out Film Guide" has compared "Stalker" to Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", also released in 1979, and argued that "as a journey to the heart of darkness" "Stalker" looks "a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's." As well, "Slant Magazine" reviewer Nick Schager has praised the film as an "endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness". In Schager's view "Stalker" shows "something akin to the essence of what man is made of: a tangled knot of memories, fears, fantasies, nightmares, paradoxical impulses, and a yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach and yet intrinsic to every one
Darkness on the Edge of Town truths in hard rock settings" made for a less accessible work than "Born to Run". "Rolling Stone" later wrote that the album was the E Street Band's best performance, "colored by the raw sound happening at the time". In 2003, it was ranked at number 151 on "Rolling Stone"s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is the 103rd most frequently ranked record on critics' all-time lists. A box set reissue entitled The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story was released on November 16, 2010.