(1990) Misery

Our story begins with Paul Sheldon (James Caan), a writer of trashy novels who has an auto accident as he travels to the isolated mountain cabin that serves as his â??literary sanctuaryâ?.

Stephen King's overweight suspense novel, may be paper-thin, but embedded within it, if only dimly seen like a watermark, there is a very funny idea.

It's been a quarter-century since we met Paul Sheldon's number one fan.

Stephen King has a modest but undeniable genius for being able to find horror in everyday situations. My notion is that he starts with a germ of truth from his own life, and then takes it as far as he can into the macabre and the bizarre. Take "Misery," for example, the story of a writer who finds himself the captive of his self-proclaimed "No. 1 fan." The hero has not finished a novel to her liking, and now she has him in her grip and he is writing under a particularly painful and violent deadline.

Contrary to their on-screen battles, the two actors palled around while discussing the movie with NBC News' Joe Fryer.

A moment so vicious it's become synonymous with the film. In the book, however, it plays out very differently, but the producers had to make a change because no one wanted to work on their movie.

Based on the novel by Stephen King. Successful romantic novelist, Paul Sheldon, who just had his life saved by his No.1 fan...now lives to regret it. When An...

Kathy Bates prepares to break James Caan’s ankles in the 1990 film ‘Misery’ (Photo: Everett Collection) If you’ve seen the horror film Misery, which opened 25 years ago this November, chances are one scene is burned into your brain: the moment when Annie Wilkes breaks the ankles of bedridden novelist