Yeah, I guess they were. I mean, I sure hope they were. But I was nine years old in 1971, so Dr. Phibes wasn't cheesy, he was really scary!
And most of the stuff he did was pretty gross and disgusting, so there's that, although special effects have obviously come a long way since then. Watching them now, I never realized how much of it was not shown; a lot of it's in your head. The best scary movies, to me, are still the ones that let your imagination fill in the blanks.