Misery **** (1990, James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, Lauren Bacall, Graham Jarvis, J T Walsh) – Classic Movie Review 3,146

Rob Reiner films Stephen King’s gruesome shocker novel Misery with a relentless tension in this engrossing and startling 1990 horror movie starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen and Lauren Bacall.

‘Oh forgive me Paul for prattling away and making everything all oogy.’ – Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates).

Producer-director Rob Reiner films Stephen King’s gruesome shocker novel Misery with a relentless tension in this engrossing and startling 1990 horror movie. William Goldman does his usual classy job of adapting the novel in a fine screenplay.

James Caan stars as Paul Sheldon, a famous bodice-ripping novelist who is rescued from the wreck of his crashed car by a loopy nurse called Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who just happens to be his ‘number one fan’. It turns out to be a bit of a mixed blessing. So, perhaps, does her love for Liberace, but we’ll let that one go.

At first she is apparently just looking after him in her snow-engulfed, remote home. But it gradually turns out that she is holding him prisoner and starts to terrorise him into abandoning his new ‘serious’ novel and resurrecting the character of Misery Chastain, the heroine of his romance books. She will not take no for an answer!

Misery is basically a two-hander. Caan holds the centre firm in what was then his best performance in a decade. But Richard Farnsworth twinkles delightfully as Sheriff Buster, Frances Sternhagen is notable as his wife Deputy Virginia, and there is just a little space for Lauren Bacall, Graham Jarvis and J T Walsh.

But it is all eyes on Kathy Bates’s brilliant, once-in-a-lifetime Best Actress Oscar-winning portrait of a believable, shockingly charismatic tormenting, psychopathic monster. Thanks to Kathy Bates, Misery is the only film based on a Stephen King novel to win an Oscar.

The film was released in the US on 30 November 1990 by Columbia Pictures. It had a medium sized budget of $18-20 million, and was a big hit, taking $61 million in the US. It continues to be a nice little earner on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.

The score is by Marc Shaiman. Three recordings by Liberace, Annie Wilkes’s favourite musician, are featured.

There is an impressively long list of actors who turned the male lead down: William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, and Robert Redford.

A much shorter list of actresses turned the female lead down: Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler. Midler later said she deeply regretted this decision.

In the novel, Annie Wilkes chops off one of Paul Sheldon’s feet with an axe. Goldman wanted it included, but Reiner insisted she only breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer. Goldman later agreed this was right as the amputation would have led the audience to hate Annie instead of (arguably) sympathising with her madness. She is the monster in the movie, though, none the less. And in 2003, Annie Wilkes was ranked #17 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Heroes & Villains list. The hobbling scene was ranked #12 on Bravo’s 2004 programme The 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Sharon Gless came to London in the mid-90s to do a stage version.

Stephen King stated that Misery is about his battle with substance abuse. He said Annie Wilkes is a representation of his dependency on drugs and what it did to his body, making him feel alone and separated from everything while hobbling any attempts at escape.

Stephen King recalled in 2000: ‘In the early 1980s, my wife and I went to London on a combined business/ pleasure trip. I fell asleep on the plane and had a dream about a popular writer. It may or may not have been me, but it sure to God wasn’t James Caan.’

Caan recalled he was attracted by how Sheldon was a role unlike any of his others, and that ‘being a totally reactionary character is really much tougher’.

Director Taylor Hackford employed the admirable Kathy Bates for another ace Stephen King adaptation, Dolores Claiborne, in 1995.

The cast are James Caan as Paul Sheldon, Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, Richard Farnsworth as Sheriff Buster, Frances Sternhagen as Deputy Virginia, Lauren Bacall as Marcia Sindell, Graham Jarvis as Libby, Jerry Potter as Pete, J T Walsh as State Trooper Sherman Douglas, and Rob Reiner as a helicopter pilot.

Frances Sternhagen in 1962.

Frances Sternhagen (January 13, 1930 – November 27, 2023) won two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Saturn Award in her extraordinary film, TV and theatre career that ran for more than six decades.

Sternhagen made her film debut in Up the Down Staircase (1967). She had character roles in Paddy Chayefsky’s The Hospital (1971), Two People (1973) and Billy Wilder’s Fedora (1978). She appeared in Starting Over (1979), opposite Sean Connery in Outland (1981), and in Michael J Fox’s films Bright Lights, Big City (1988) and Doc Hollywood (1991). She was also notable as Deputy Virginia in Rob Reiner’s 1990 Misery and as Dr Lynn Waldheim in Brian De Palma’s 1992 Raising Cain. Her final screen credit was Rob Reiner’s 2014 romantic comedy And So It Goes starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3,146

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