A famous novelist named Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is known for Victorian romance novels starring a character named Misery Chastain. He wishes to write more serious literature. Having just finished his last book with Misery, he is caught in a blizzard in Colorado and crashes his car. Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) discovers him and brings him to her isolated home.
He wakes up bedridden with broken legs and a dislocated shoulder. Annie, who is a nurse and his Number One Fan, says she will take care of him until the phone-lines are reconnected and the local roads cleared. At first, he is grateful, but then she reads his latest novel and discovers that Misery dies at the end. She flies into a rage and reveals that she has not told anyone where he is.
She forces Paul to burn the only copy of his new manuscript and orders him to write another book featuring Misery. He finds a bobby pin and unlocks the bedroom door when she leaves the house, and he explores the place in his wheelchair. There is no phone, and the outer doors are locked. He tries to drug her with his painkillers, but she foils his plan.
He finds a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and discovers that Annie had been put on trial for several infant deaths in her hospital. During the trial, she had quoted his Misery books in her defence. Discovering that he had escaped his room, she breaks his ankles with a mallet. His agent in New York, Marcia Sindell (Lauren Bacall), phones the local sheriff, Buster (Richard Farnsworth) who is investigating Paul’s disappearance, and he comes to Annie’s home, where he finds Paul drugged in the basement. Annie kills the sheriff with a shotgun.
That night, Paul finishes the novel and sends Annie to the kitchen for champagne to celebrate. He douses the manuscript with lighter fluid and when Annie returns, he sets it on fire. When she is distracted, he hits her with his typewriter. They struggle and Paul suffers a gunshot wound while Annie is knocked out. Finally, he hits her with an iron doorstop and kills her.
Eighteen months later, Paul is still walking with a cane when he meets with Marcia, his agent in New York. His first novel without Misery has received critical acclaim and is poised to be a best seller. The agent wants him to write a book about his experience with Annie, but he refuses. A waitress comes up and tells him she is his Number One Fan, and he replies, “That’s sweet of you.”
The film was directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay by William Golding based on Stephen King’s 1987 story. The only other Rob Reiner/William Golding film was The Princess Bride, about as far away from Misery as you can get. Cathy Bates was a stage actress and largely unknown, but this made her career. She received a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Actress, the only Oscar for a film based on a book by Stephen King and only one of three Oscars ever received by an actor in a horror film. The other two were Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.
The role of Paul Sheldon was offered to William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, and Robert Redford. Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler turned down the Kathy Bates roll. Bette Midler said it was about the dumbest thing she ever did. At the box-office, the film came in second after Home Alone.
The film was extraordinarily claustrophobic: basically, two people in one room. Richard Farnsworth as the Sheriff and Frances Sternhagen as his wife made a nice change from the horrific tension with their diverting comedy banter. They couldn’t possibly be any more welcome in the midst of the relationship between the two main characters. There’s hardly any point in my saying this is a great movie; just about everybody says so.