Misery | Lauren Bacall, Kathy Bates | `I am your number one fan...'

Misery | Lauren Bacall, Kathy Bates | An excellent movie from Stephen King's novel with Kathy Bates as the villain....ooooh, scary!!!

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Misery

	Misery Lauren Bacall, Kathy Bates MGM (Video & DVD), 2000 average customer review:based on 175 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

`I am your number one fan...'

Both Stephen King and Rob Reiner have lost much of their charm for me in the past fifteen years, but in 1990 they were still in top enough form to create this masterpiece. Having struck gold in 1986 with his memorable adaptation of King's Stand By Me, Reiner made another attempt at the works of the successful suspense artist, and brought along for the task screenwriter William Goldman, with whom he worked before on the film version of Goldman's own novel The Princess Bride (Goldman would later adapt King twice more, somewhat less successfully, with Hearts In Atlantis and Dreamcatcher).

King's writing is clearly at its best when he keeps the supernatural to a minimum; the stark reality is what made Stand By Me powerful, and it worked even better in Misery. Not only does King keep things frighteningly realistic in this story - it's also clearly semi-autobiographical - not, of course, that he was actually kidnapped by a crazed fan, but King's experiences with over zealous fans of his work clearly seeps into the story, and like in The Shining, King writes best when he writes about writers. James Caan does a more than adapt job of playing the bitter, King-ish author Paul Sheldon; master-adapter Goldman (whose credits also include Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, All The President's Men and Marathon Man) did a fantastic job of translating the book into the big screen.

As good a job as Reiner, Goldman and Caan did, this film clearly belongs to Hollywood newcomer Kathy Bates, who won a much deserved Oscar for the role of Annie Wilkes (over old-timers Meryl Streep and Anjelica Huston). Bates is brilliant, frightening and sympathetic in the role which remains the defining role of her acclaimed career, and she makes the character come alive like no other actress could have, proving that being blonde and skinny is not what makes a great actress. Annie Wilkes remains one of the most memorable villains in cinema history, and for good reasons. Caan is excellent in his part, and praise should also go to supporting actors Lauren Bacall and Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story), but Bates steals the show from all of them.

Thanks to Kathy Bates' masterful performance and Rob Reiner's wonderful direction, Misery is one of the most powerful and frightening thrillers in cinema history. If anyone needed proof that Reiner was capable of serious dramatic films and not just quotable cult comedies like This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally, Misery proved that point, although it doesn't lack in its own quotable one-liners. It's a strong, realistic horror film that doesn't let go. A modern classic and highly recommended.

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An excellent movie from Stephen King's novel with Kathy Bates as the villain....ooooh, scary!!!

This is one of the greatest movies ever made in the history of American cinema. Misery is about a famous author, Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan), who has just finished writing a book that does not yet have a title ("Untitled" was the name of it). He goes out leaving the lodge he was staying in and shortly after he leaves, there is a huge snowstorm coming down, so bad to a point that Paul loses control of his car (a '65 Mustang, believe it or not), and crashes down a hill and lies for sometime in the overturned car, mangled and almost dead. Luckily for him, along comes Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates), who saves him and nurses him back to health in the comforts of her own country home. A couple of days later, Paul wakes up and sees himself in Annie's home, and he realizes that she is his "Number 1 Fan", and proves it by having all of Paul's published Misery archives of the Misery character. At first, Annie seems like a nice person, but shortly later on, she becomes a total [...] and reveals her true colors when she reads about Misery being killed. She has an extreme fit (probably much worse than a general PMS fit) about Misery's demise and insists that Paul write a new novel to "bring Misery back",which she called "Misery's Return"! (After making him burn his untitled book in a barbecue grill!!) How rediculous and senseless that seems; it's quite obvious that when a character ends up dead in a story, he or she cannot possibly come back to life. Another incredible and intriguing scene is while Annie is at the store getting new typing paper for Paul because the kind she got was the kind that smudged, he gets out of his room and discovers Annie's scrapbook. This is where he learns of her troubled past by seeing the newspaper articles about these various people who were killed in her care at the hospital where she worked, including numerous infant babies (the scene where he hurries back to his room after hearing Annie's Jeep pull up returning to the house is a nail biter as well; you almost think he won't make it back in time but he does--narrowly). Annie also becomes obsessed with Paul and his writing of the "new novel" that not only is she nursing him back to health (in a macabre and slow way), but she is also holding him prisoner in her home. In other words, Annie was making it quite difficult and almost impossible for Paul to survive and recover. Some of the people closest to him, his agent (played by screen legend Lauren Bacall), and Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen (the husband-and-wife police team), have almost no hope of ever finding Paul alive. But, towards the end of the movie, the sheriff goes to Annie's house inquiring about Paul, and Annie is giving just idle and small talk about her "general liking" for Paul's work. When the sheriff leaves, Paul makes a noise to distract the sheriff, sheriff walks back in, sees Paul downstairs in the cellar and gets shot by Annie's double barrel shotgun! The hobbling scene earlier in the film is scary to watch, and you almost feel the intense pain that Paul feels when Annie uses her strength to smash his ankles on that log; she did that to make sure he stays in his room and continues writing. Before she hobbles his feet, she also took away what I call his "freedom key", which was one of her bobby pins from her hair. What a hateful lady Annie is!!! The real showdown comes at the end of the movie when Paul and Annie are fighting. She's eager to find out what happens at the end of the book, but Paul tries to knock her out and the fight is on. The whole fight seems to be over when Paul trips Annie and she lands onto the typewriter (its bell rings when she bangs her head on it; ouch!!). But, a few seconds later, when Paul has crawled out of his room, Annie comes back for more and she is obviously finished off when Paul hits her with what I call an "iron version of Misery the pig", and it's over. I am a huge fan of this movie and of Kathy Bates. She is a great and excellent actress and she truly deserved her Oscar for her role as Annie Wilkes. Annie Wilkes is also one of the most scary fictitious characters in the history of American cinema. Get this movie; with a mixed bag of comedy and horror, you will be almost scared to death and kind of amused!!!

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As Good As The Book.....

After reading the book Misery (yes, Stephen King delivers again!), I couldn't wait to see this movie. I did so as soon as it hit the theaters. Great show that does the book justice. Cathy Bates and James Caan give great performances. A well known bookwriter gets into a car crash and is rescued by his biggest fan. He is taken to her home to recover from his injuries but finds out that his biggest fan is quite a disturbed woman who is now holding him captive in her isolated farm home forcing him to write a sequel to her favorite book. No horror here but good suspense. Very well done.

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whatever happened to baby jane much?

most fans of this movie seem to have never seen "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" before.Mr King was obviously influenced by that movie while writing Misery. A demented woman keeping an invalid locked up.
But James Caan and Kathy Bates manage to give great performances: They are the ones who make the movie. Not to mention it is always a delight having lauren Bacall on screen.
This movie is entertaining like most of King's early works.

Misery

First of all, when I bought this dvd from Sears for about 10 dollars, and later opened it up at home, I noticed that the CD was out of the case's grip and was jumping and moving and sliding around with the movement of my beat. In other words, the little tiny thing at the middle of the inside, that says 'push' was broken, in fact, snapped into 2, the moment I pulled it normally out of the dvd rack at the store, therefore the CD got all scratched up, but is still useable. And my case wasn't a special or 'unlucky' case either. There were about 10 or so dvd copies of 'Misery' on the rack, and I noticed that pratically everyone of the copies 'little things at the middle that read push' were snapped in two. How did I know this without even opening the cases? Well, I held it in my hands and flipped the dvd, to the front and backcovers, over and over, and could hear the CD inside, rocking and moving and banging along the sides. It's not supposed to do that. It's supposed to be in the grip of those crab-like pinchers if you will, to stay sustained in it's place, but it was moving and rocking about, so those crab-like pinchers were broken.
Though, enough about the low-quality of the dvd cases, and those crab-like pinchers. As for the actual quailty of the movie, adaptated from Stephen King's 1987 best-selling novel, Misery, about a famous writer being hostaged by his insane 'number one-fan'-I have to give it just a 3 star rating or an average, medium rating, because honestly, I didn't feel that the movie adaptation of King's wonderful, terrifying 1987 thriller, can bring vindicating justice to it. For one, the cut scenes were terribly done. For example, there will be a scene of Annie and Paul in the same room, and then the next scene will be of Annie's farmhouse or the view of the snowy Colorado mountains, and I have to admit, no matter how much I want to stay positive and not be negative, that it looks very choppy and un-professional. Two, Annie doesn't chop off Pauls legs with an axe, and you don't get to see the blood, instead it's something much more kittier; getting both his ankles broken by sledgehammer blows. Three, the scene of Annie riding her lawnmover over one of the local deputy polices and then slaughtering him up into little bite size chunky pieces, is edited out, because Rob Reiner, the director, thought people would laugh at it so he decided to edit it out, though that's only his opinion and view on the matter so he couldn't be 100, not even 50 percent sure. If he wanted to know, I, and probably many others would have loved to see that scene of deputy lawnmowing bloodshed galore.
Overall, this is an average movie, which deserves an average rating of 3 out of 5 stars. Directed averagly, casted averagly, adaptated from the novel by Stephen King averagly, priced averagly, edited and cutted averagly, scared me averagly, presentated averagly, dvd case of it, a little below averagly because of the broken 'crab-pinchers' or 'the dvd-graspers', but still giving the movie an 'average' score anyway, for like the saying goes, "Don't judge a book by it's cover." Overall, everything is average. If you want an average horror film, if you are an average person, this is for you I guess.
But if you want something much better, a better adaptated Stephen King film, a better directed, a better casted, a better edited and cutted, a more scarier, a generally more faithful and more justifying and plain better horror film(either adaptated from one of King's novels or not)I recommend "Carrie" directed by Brian De Palma(most well-known for directing the classic 1983 film about drugs, money, love, ambition, corruption, betrayal, the American dream; "Scarface")instead of the film I just ended reviewing, "Misery."

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