spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter". For many years after Vampyrs initial release, the film was viewed by critics as one of Dreyer's weaker works. More modern reception for Vampyr has been more positive. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 98% based upon a sample of 40 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Full of disorienting visual effects, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr is as theoretically unsettling as it is conceptually disturbing." Todd Kristel of the online film database AllMovie gave the film four and a half stars out of five, stating that "Vampyr isn't the easiest classic film to enjoy, even if you are a fan of 1930s horror movies...If you're patient with the slow pacing and ambiguous story line of Vampyr, you'll find that this film offers many striking images" and that although the film is "not exciting in terms of pacing, it's a good choice if you want to see a film that establishes a compelling mood". Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote, "The greatness of Carl Dreyer's [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer's radical recasting of narrative form". J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote that "Vampyr is Dreyer's most radical film—maybe one of my dozen favorite movies by any director". Anton Bitel of Channel 4 awarded the film four and a half stars out of five, comparing it to the silent vampire film Nosferatu, stating that it is "lesser known (but in many ways superior)" and that the film is "a triumph of the irrational, Dreyer's eerie memento mori never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare". In the early 2010s, the London edition of Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. Vampyr placed at number 50 on their top 100 list. Home media Vampyr has been released with imperfect image and sound as the original German and French sound and film negatives are lost. Prints of the French and German versions of the film exist but most of them are either incomplete or