[Shazbut]

It is simply more about the era and generation of the time. As a few peeps here have mentioned... for *it's time*, The Exorcist was controversial and scary. People were more *god-conscious* in the 70's and would have felt that superstitious unease of demonic possession. I was young when I watched it and it did scare the shit out of me at the time - because of my impressionable age and upbringing.

But as time went on and after watching hundreds of *scary*, gore-fest movies and becoming more sceptic about the god thing, I am rather de-sensitised to the masterpiece of The Exorcist. And we do know that the youth of today are totally de-senisitised to it, as more and more horror movies/video games get pumped into the mainstream. There is more leniancy on what we are watching.

Look at it this way..... I had to watch The Exorcist over a friend's house (it was her much older brother who got a copy) and we had to wait til all the adults were out til we watched it - with a sense of guilt and butterflies in the stomach in case we got caught - which, of course, added to to the sense of horror!

Sign of the times, an' all!! :D