Less than a month ago, Santa Mira was like any other town. People with nothing but problems. Then, out of the sky came a solution. Seeds drifting through space for years took root in a farmer's field. From the seeds came pods which had the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life...Your new bodies are growing in there. They're taking you over cell for cell, atom for atom. There is no pain. Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories and you're reborn into an untroubled world...Tomorrow you'll be one of us...There's no need for love...Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without them, life is so simple, believe me.
Dr. Miles Bennell
Kevin McCarthy · 21 quotes
Becky Driscoll
Dana Wynter · 6 quotes
Dr. Kauffman
Larry Gates · 5 quotes
Jack Belicec
King Donovan · 5 quotes
Most scenes together: Dr. Miles Bennell & Dr. Kauffman (3), Dr. Miles Bennell & Jack Belicec (3), Dr. Miles Bennell & Becky Driscoll (2)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers quotes
Page 1 of 3
Ambulance Driver
We had to dig him out from under the most peculiar things I ever saw.
Dr. Hill
What things?
Ambulance Driver
Well, I don't know what they are, I never saw them before. They looked like great big seed pods.
Dr. Hill
Where was the truck coming from?
Ambulance Driver
Santa Mira.
Dr. Hill
Get on your radios and sound an all points alarm. Block all highways, stop all traffic, and call every law enforcement agency in the state. [on phone] Operator, get me the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, it's an emergency!
Dr. Bassett Oh, Doctor Hill.
Dr. Hill
Dr. Basset. Well, where's the patient?
Dr. Bassett I hated to drag you out of bed at this time of night. You'll soon see why I did.
A strange neurosis, evidently contagious, an epidemic mass hysteria. In two weeks, it spread all over town.
What causes it?
Worry about what's going on in the world probably.
We can't let you go. You're dangerous to us.
Don't fight it, Miles, it's no use. Sooner or later, you'll have to go to sleep.
Miles, you and I are scientific men. You can understand the wonder of what’s happening. Now just think, less than a month ago, Santa Mira was like any other town. People with nothing but problems. Then, out of the sky came a solution. Seeds drifting through space for years took root in a farmer's field. From the seeds came pods which had the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life.
So that's how it began...out of the sky.
Your new bodies are growing in there. They're taking you over cell for cell, atom for atom. There is no pain. Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories and you're reborn into an untroubled world.
Where everyone's the same?
Exactly.
What a world. We're not the last humans left. They'll destroy you!
Tomorrow you won't want them to. Tomorrow you'll be one of us.
I love Becky. Tomorrow will I feel the same?
No emotion? Then you have no feelings, only the instinct to survive. You can't love or be loved! Am I right?
You say it as if it were terrible. Believe me, it isn't. You've been in love before. It didn't last. It never does. Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without them, life is so simple, believe me.
I don't want any part of it.
You're forgetting something, Miles.
What's that?
You have no choice.
Stop trying to rationalize everything, will ya? Let's face it, we have a mystery on our hands!
Sure you have. A real one! Whose body was it and where is it now? A completely normal mystery. Whatever it is, it's well within the bounds of human experience and I don't think you ought to make any more of it.
Look, I wouldn't if I hadn't looked in Becky's cellar! How do you explain away the body I saw there?
I don't think you saw one there.
You don't think I saw one here either?
I know you did because three others saw it too.
But I dreamed up the second one?
Doctors can have hallucinations too.
What are you going to do?
Get help. I hope whatever's taking place is confined to Santa Mira! [picks up the phone] Operator. This is Dr. Bennell. This is an emergency. I want to talk to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles.
Can you convince them?
I've got to.
Where did they come from?
So much has been discovered these past few years. Anything is possible. Maybe the results of atomic radiation on plant life or animal life...some weird alien organism, a mutation of some kind.
Why should they take the form of people--of us?
I don't know. Whatever it is...whatever intelligence or instinct it is that can govern the forming of human flesh and blood out of thin air is...well, it's fantastically powerful, beyond any comprehension, malignant. All that body in your cellar needed was a mind, and it was...
And it was taking mine while I was asleep.
This is the oddest thing I've ever heard of. Let's hope we don't catch it. I'd hate to wake up some morning and find out that you weren't you.
You really want to know?
Mmm-hmm.
Is this an example of your bedside manner, doctor?
No, ma'am. That comes later.
What's the matter with them?
Sally They wouldn't say. You know, usually people can't talk enough about what's ailing them.
[describing a body he found]
It's like the first impression that's stamped on a coin. It isn't finished.
[discovering that Becky is also divorced]
Well, I guess that makes us lodge brothers now...except that I'm paying dues while you collect them.
[voiceover]
Driving home, I had a lot of questions and no answers. How could Jimmy and Wilma seem so normal now. Surely I had done nothing to cure them. Maybe they wanted me to feel secure but why?
[voiceover]
It started - for me, it started - last Thursday, in response to an urgent message from my nurse, I hurried home from a medical convention I'd been attending. At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn't. Something evil had taken possession of the town.
[voiceover]
Sick people who couldn't wait to see me, then suddenly were perfectly all right. A boy who said his mother wasn't his mother. A woman who said her uncle wasn't her uncle.
And so I ran. I ran! I ran! I ran! I ran as little Jimmy Grimaldi ran the other day.