The Exorcist (1973)

Barton Heyman: Dr. Klein

Photos 

Quotes 

• Dr. Klein : Do you keep any drugs in your house?

  Chris MacNeil : No, of course not, nothing like that.

  Dr. Klein : Are you sure?

  Chris MacNeil : Well, of course I'm sure. I'd tell you. Christ, I don't even smoke grass.

• [2000 version] 

  Chris MacNeil : Well, give me an example. Like what specifically did she say?

  Dr. Klein : Specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised me to "keep my fingers away from her goddamned cunt."

• Chris MacNeil : Oh no, that was no spasm. I got on the bed. The whole bed was thumping and rising off the floor and shaking. The whole thing, with me on it!

  Dr. Klein : Mrs. MacNeil, the problem with your daughter is not her bed; it's her brain.

• Dr. Taney : Pathological states can induce abnormal strength. Accelerated motor performance. Now, for example, say a 90 pound woman sees her child pinned under the wheel of a truck. Runs out and lifts the wheels a half a foot up off the ground - you've heard the story - same thing here. Same principle, I mean.

  Chris MacNeil : So what's wrong with her?

  Dr. Klein : We still think the temporal lobe.

  Chris MacNeil : Oh what are you talking about, for Chrissakes? Did you see her or not? She's acting like she's fucking out of her mind, psychotic, like a... split personality or...

  Dr. Taney : There haven't been more than a hundred authentic cases of so-called split personality, Mrs. MacNeil. Now I know the temptation is to leap to psychiatry. But any reasonable psychiatrist would exhaust the somatic possibilities first.

  Chris MacNeil : So, what's next?

  Dr. Taney : A pneumoencephalogram, I would think. Pin down that lesion. It will involve another spinal.

  Chris MacNeil : Oh, Christ.

  Dr. Taney : What we missed in the EEG and the arteriograms could conceivably turn up there. At least, it would eliminate certain other possibilities.

• Dr. Klein : Any reasonable psychiatrist would eliminate a physical cause first.