Film spectators are quiet vampires.

The reviewer from The Film Spectator appointed it "as perhaps the best comedy of the year thus far" and advised "exhibitors should go after it."

The film received positive reviews, Wilfred Beaton of Film Spectator called it "the finest program picture ever turned out by a studio".

However Welford Beaton of The Film Spectator disliked the 42-reel version and criticized its excessive use of close-ups.

Welford Beaton, writing in the Film Spectator, announced: "Introducing to you Mr. Paul Fejos, Genius."

Roland Barthes, a French literary critic and semiotician, described film spectators as being in a "para-oneiric" state, feeling "...sleepy and drowsy as if they had just woken up" when a film ends.

John Smith (b. 1952, Walthamstow, England) is an award winning avant garde filmmaker noted for his use of humour in exploring various themes that often play upon the film spectator's conditioned assumptions of the medium.

Various cinematic devices are used both to intensify the characterizations (especially with close-ups and direct-to-camera asides), but also to distance the film spectator from the theatrical experience (e.g. dissolves to achieve characters' exits, overhead camera shots for some of the ensemble numbers).