"Fear and Desire" was a commercial failure, but garnered several positive reviews upon release. Critics such as the reviewer from "The New York Times" believed that Kubrick's professionalism as a photographer shone through in the picture, and that he "artistically caught glimpses of the grotesque attitudes of death, the wolfishness of hungry men, as well as their bestiality, and in one scene, the wracking effect of lust on a pitifully juvenile soldier and the pinioned girl he is guarding". Columbia University scholar Mark Van Doren was highly impressed by the scenes with the girl bound to the tree, remarking that it would live on as a "beautiful, terrifying and weird" sequence which illustrated Kubrick's immense talent and guaranteed his future success. Kubrick himself later expressed embarrassment with "Fear and Desire", and attempted over the years to keep prints of the film out of circulation. During the production of the film, Kubrick almost killed his cast with poisonous gasses by mistake.