In a contemporary review, Charles Burton from "Rolling Stone" found "Fun House" to be "much more sophisticated" than the Stooges' debut album, writing that they sounded "so exquisitely horrible and down and out that they are the ultimate psychedelic rock band in 1970". Roy Hollingworth of "Melody Maker" was unimpressed however, calling it the worst record of the year and "a muddy load of sluggish, unimaginative rubbish heavily disguised by electricity and called American rock". Christgau wrote in his original review for "The Village Voice" that the Stooges' competent monotony and incorporation of saxophone had intellectual appeal, but questioned whether it was healthy as a listener for " to have to be in a certain mood of desperate abandon before I can get on with them musically". He later said his criticism had been based on the album's "inaccessibility" as popular music, and wrote in "" (1981):