Directed by Don Siegel. Written by Daniel Mainwaring, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954).

Dr. Miles Bennell

• Doctor, will you tell these fools? I'm not crazy. Make them listen to me before it's too late.

• [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.

• [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] 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.

• [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?

• Maybe they're the result of atomic radiation on plant life or animal life. Some weird alien organism - a mutation of some kind...Whatever it is, whatever intelligence or instinct it is that govern the forming of human flesh and blood out of thin air, is fantastically powerful...All that body in your cellar needed was a mind...

• In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind...All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.

• Drugs dull the mind... maybe that's the reason.

• Keep your eyes a little wide and blank. Show no interest or excitement.

• I never knew fear until I kissed Becky.

• And so I ran. I ran! I ran! I ran! I ran as little Jimmy Grimaldi ran the other day.

• Help! Wait! Stop. Stop and listen to me!... These people who're coming after me are not human!

• Look, you fools, you're in danger! Can't you see?! They're after you! They're after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! THEY'RE HERE, ALREADY! YOU'RE NEXT!

Becky Driscoll

• You know her uncle, Uncle Ira?...Well Miles, she's got herself thinking he isn't her uncle. She thinks he's an imposter or something.

• They're like huge seed pods!

• I want to love and be loved. I want your children. I don't want a world without love or grief or beauty. I'd rather die.

• He's in here. He's in here. Get him. Get him.

Jack Belicec

• [describing a body he found] It's like the first impression that's stamped on a coin. It isn't finished.

• 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.

Others

• Dr. Kauffman: 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.

Dialogue

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.

Miles: What's the matter with them?

Sally: They wouldn't say. You know, usually people can't talk enough about what's ailing them.

Dr. Kauffman: A strange neurosis, evidently contagious, an epidemic mass hysteria. In two weeks, it spread all over town.

Miles: What causes it?

Dr. Kauffman: Worry about what's going on in the world probably.

Miles: 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.

Becky: [laughs] I'm not the high school kid you use to romance, so how can you tell?

Miles: You really want to know?

Becky: Mmm-hmm.

Miles: [after kissing her] Mmmm, you're Becky Driscoll, all right!

Becky: Is this an example of your bedside manner, doctor?

Miles: No, ma'am. That comes later.

Jack: Stop trying to rationalize everything, will ya? Let's face it, we have a mystery on our hands!

Dr. Kauffman: 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.

Miles: Look, I wouldn't if I hadn't looked in Becky's cellar! How do you explain away the body I saw there?

Dr. Kauffman: I don't think you saw one there.

Miles: You don't think I saw one here either?

Dr. Kauffman: I know you did because three others saw it too.

Miles: But I dreamed up the second one?

Dr. Kauffman: Doctors can have hallucinations too.

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!

Taglines

• They come from another world!

• YOU'RE NEXT!

• There was nothing to hold onto - except each other.

• Incredible! Invisible! Insatiable!

Cast

• Kevin McCarthy - Dr. Miles J. Bennell
• Dana Wynter - Becky Driscoll
• Larry Gates - Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman
• King Donovan - Jack Belicec
• Carolyn Jones - Theodora 'Teddy' Belicec
• Jean Willes - Nurse Sally Withers
• Ralph Dumke - Police Chief Nick Grivett
• Virginia Christine - Wilma Lentz
• Tom Fadden - Uncle Ira Lentz
• Kenneth Patterson - Stanley Driscoll