How did I stay out of this discussion for so long?!
Much of the discussion here is very interesting and, I believe, most opinions are fed by our own experiences.
Like Besty, who is the same age as me, people were effing scared, whether they fainted or puked may have been exaggerating, but there was real terror and fascination surrounding this film. This is after it was a best selling novel, so everyone knew what was going to happen on screen, but to actually see it and the details that were portrayed were shocking to most people.
If anyone paid anyone to pretend to faint and run in the aisles, I would bet it would be the catholic church. This forgotten, dead terror became the talk of everyone and made the catholics relevant again. Having been raised catholic and being too young to see the film originally, it had a profound effect on me before I flipping saw it! The Carol Burnett sketch with Bernadette Peters, the mention of it on Maude when the kid joked about wanting to see it to see how fast he'd puke. It was everywhere...scaring everyone. So when I finally saw it a few years later, it didnt disappoint scare-wise for me, even though I did expect alot of what happened. I can imagine being truly freaked if I'd seen it originally in the theater.
I certainly can understand, however, if someone was raised without much religion (like Linda Blair, btw), just not getting the fright of it all, and perhaps looking at it as silly.
The frights in the film for me were the unexpected stuff, like the candle in the attic.
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