It was a lot of fainting and leaving the theater.

While there have always been movies with a hint of fright, we didn’t really figure out the whole “scary” movie thing until relatively recently. And even then, it was pretty hit-and-miss at the beginning.

One movie that has stood the test of time, both in quality and scare factor, is The Exorcist. This classic really freaked people out when it was first released, as evidenced by the shocked reactions of those who left the theater early in this vintage video clip: