I saw this movie at the Main Theater on Main Street in Dayton Ohio during its first release. I don't think I was more than 6-7 years old. It scared me nearly to death and for weeks the sound of crickets at night or that chirping sound you hear in the movie woke me up.
There is something about the visual versus the aural that is at play here. It is, in clearest form, the difference between TV and Radio. If you were a kid and came from radio listening - Suspense, FibberMaggie and Molly, Burns and Allen etc. and were thrust into a movie theater on a saturday morning with all your friends and had to be brave - and we are talking about a movie that before the last reel of the movie, the lights would go on and they would raffle a bike or something and that is where we went on Saturday morning.....it cost 25 cents....well this was scary stuff because it was both audio and visual and we weren't up for that at 7.