Product Description

A "heart-stopping psychological thriller" (Joel Siegel) this Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* film is "one of the best horror movies" (Time) ever. Adapted from a Stephen King story by OscarÂ(r)-winning** screenwriter William Goldman (All the President's Men) and directed by Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men), this chiller starring Kathy Bates (Titanic) and James Caan (The Godfather), is "a Hitchcockian kind of cat-and-mouse" (The New York Times) gameplayed between two cunning mindsone as sharp as a tack and the other as blunt as a sledgehammer. Novelist Paul Sheldon (Caan) doesn't remember the blinding blizzard that sent his car spinning off the road. Nor does he remember being nursed back from unconsciousness. All he remembers iswaking up in the home of Annie Wilkes (Bates)a maniacal fan who is bent on keeping her favorite writer as her personal prisoner for the rest of his "cock-a-doodie" life!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12333 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 107 minutes

Amazon.com
Based on the chilling bestseller by Stephen King, Misery was brought to the screen by director Rob Reiner as one of the most effective thrillers of the 1990s. From a brilliant adaptation by screenwriter William Goldman, Reiner turned King's cautionary tale of fame and idolatry into a mainstream masterpiece of escalating suspense, translating King's own experience with obsessive fans into a frightening tale of entrapment and psychotic behavior. Kathy Bates deservedly won an Academy Award for her performance as Annie Wilkes, an unbalanced devotee of romance novels written by Paul Sheldon (James Caan), whose books provide Annie with a much-needed escape from her pathetic life and her secret, violent past. After Annie rescues the injured Sheldon from a car accident, she seizes the opportunity to nurse her favorite writer back to health, but her tender loving care soon turns to terrorism as she demands that Sheldon write his latest novel according to her wish-fulfillment fantasies. From this point forward, Misery percolates to a boil as equal parts mystery, thriller, and cleverly dark comedy, with the helpless author pitched in deadly warfare against his number one fan. While Bates carefully modulates her role from doting kindness to sympathetic loneliness and finally to horrifying ferocity, Caan is equally superb as the celebrated author who must literally write for his life. It's essentially a two-actor film, but Richard Farnsworth and Lauren Bacall are excellent in supporting roles as they investigate the writer's mysterious disappearance. Frightening, funny, and totally irresistible, Misery was such a hit that some of Bates's dialogue entered the popular lexicon (particularly her nagging reference to Caan as "Mister Man"), and its nail-biting thrills remain timelessly intense. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Spoiler Review: Paul Sheldon is a Black Man
Originally released in 1990 the Rob Reiner film "Misery" was based on the bestselling 1987 Stephen King novel. The novel was adapted by the great scriptwriter William Goldman (The Stepford Wives, Marathon Man, All the Presidents Men). The film is apparently a tale about pathological stalking and star worship. However, underlying those obvious horror and suspense vehicles there are some metaphors, surprisingly enough, about colonialism. Producer/Director Rob Reiner and co-producer Andrew Scheinman made some significant script changes in the pivotal scene of this movie that subdues many of the powerful symbols contained in the novel. The central character in Stephen King's novel says some very intriguing things that were omitted from the film adaptation. For those viewers that have seen the central horror scene in this movie the following interpretation asks you to experience it in a new way. If you're not familiar with it I hope to help you see it twice the first time.
The title "Misery" is taken from the best selling novel series authored by the fictional central character in Stephen King's novel. In King's novel and the subsequent movie this central character is named Paul Sheldon, a best selling author who has grown tired of being artistically pigeon holed into writing the "Misery" series. When the movie opens Sheldon is in a remote lodge in a small town in Colorado completing a new novel that he hopes will free him from writing in the same genre as the Misery series. After completing the novel he starts down a winding road, gets caught in a blizzard and crashes off of the road. A local resident and apparent savior, Annie Wilkes, pulls him from the car that is half buried in snow and begins to nurse him back to health in her remotely located house. At first Paul Sheldon is quite grateful for Annie's efforts to save him. But, after several conversations he begins to realize that she is obsessed with the novel series that he is famous for and in fact had been stalking him right up until the moment he had completed the last novel.
Eventually, we realize that Annie Wilkes is a psychotic stalker and not at all a savior. As the narrative develops Annie becomes more demanding and eventually forces Paul to labor, against his will, over a new "Misery" novel. Paul is a bedridden captive to a psychotic former nurse who keeps him sedated. She is a frighteningly contradictory persona who simultaneously inflicts sadistic pain and agony, yet assures her "patient" that she loves him. This type of pathology is most vividly represented in one of the most famous horror scenes in recent cinema. This scene is the pivot point of the entire movie, not just because it is such a cruel act, but also because the dialogue raises several interesting questions that are compelling to answer.
After Annie discovers that Paul has been trying to escape from the bedroom she sedates him and straps him to the bed. When he regains consciousness Annie is standing beside the bed. In one of the documentaries in the new DVD version the Director of Photography, Barry Sonnenfeld indicates that he made a decision to use a 21mm close-up lens on Kathy Bates to emphasize the horror of being close to Annie Wilkes. As she makes her way to the foot of the bed she begins to ask the questions, " Paul do you know about the early days of the Kimberley diamond mines?" and "Do you know what they did to the native workers who stole diamonds?" she asks. One would assume that if these two were located in Colorado that Annie would be referring to Native Americans. However, there are no additional clues in the film that give us the location of the mines or which "natives" Annie is referring to. She proceeds to explain the operation of "hobbling" the native workers that were caught stealing. "If they caught them they had to make sure that they could go on working, but they also had to make sure they could never run away. The operation was called `hobbling'." Annie places a four by four block of wood between Paul's ankles and raises a sledgehammer up while Paul pleads with her not to go through with "the operation". Annie swings the sledgehammer against Paul's foot breaking his leg at the ankle. Amid Paul's agonized screams she moves to the other side of the bed and completes the "hobbling" operation by breaking his other ankle.
This scene leads us to ask, which native workers is Annie referring to and why is she referring to diamond mines? Why is she referring to a specific diamond mine? The Kimberley diamond mines are located in South Africa. The British under the leadership of 19th century diamond mine owner Cecil Rhodes, did have a practice called "hobbling" that was used on indigenous African people. Why is there this abrupt geographic disconnect in a film ostensibly set in Colorado? The intriguing questions that this scene raises changes the nature of some of the visual symbols in the film. In addition, along with the added information that the original novel provides the two main characters become more significant than stalker and stalked, torturer and tortured. They become metaphors for the colonizer and the colonized.
Annie Wilkes is holding the writer Paul Sheldon captive not just because she is obsessed with him but also because she is forcing him to write another "Misery" novel. She is extracting forced labor from him and to insure that he continues to provide that forced labor without the possibility of escape she hobbles him. She does this for the same reason that black men were hobbled in South Africa. Annie Wilkes is the portrait of a typically condescending racist colonialist who has a sexual fixation with the colonized while simultaneously viewing them as infantile and needing protection. In an early scene she refers to him being "...like a baby..." and later in the film she screams at him, "...I feed you, I clean you, I dress you..." all the while oblivious to the fact that she is holding him as a captive. Particularly striking is the scene in which Annie descends a staircase towards Paul, who is laying on the floor of the house basement, while carrying a pistol in one hand and a hypodermic needle in the other. The shining crucifix that she always wears completes the colonial triumvirate of symbols. Annie Wilkes becomes a startlingly vivid image of the colonial missionary savior with questionable "vaccine" in one hand and Western power in the other. Both of these given the moral efficacy of the European Judeo-Christian "civilizing" god.
We view Paul Sheldon as a black man in this movie not because we are engaging in an exercise of Jose Munoz style "Disidentification". We are not projecting Black identity onto a white character. We are reading very deliberate symbols that were placed in the narrative by Steven King and subsequently subdued or muted by the filmmakers. In King's novel Paul Sheldon is particularly fixated on Africa and not just as a distant place but as his savior in some way. This is made particularly vivid in a scene in the novel where he may potentially be rescued by a cop. He has been terrorized for so long that he cannot bring himself to scream. But when he finally does he screams "Africa! Africa! Help me! Help me! Africa!" Rob Reiner, Andrew Scheinman and William Goldman have omitted many of the more explicit references to Africa and colonialism that were found in King's novel. However, the pivotal "hobbling" scene in the movie left enough of those references intact to warrant further investigation. The music of Miles Davis has taught me to listen for the use of creative silences. The analytical strategy of discerning profound absence is being applied here to understand the willful omission of key references found in King's novel. These absences beg other questions about the motivations of the filmmakers in a silent way.

Misery
Stephen King is an awesome screen writter. His movies are filled without suspense without blood and guts flying everywhere. ALl his movies are suspenseful and leave you wanting to see the next movie by Stephen King.

MISERY CHASTAIN CANNOT BE DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Paul, I'm sorry to keep prattling on and making you feel all ooggy..."

God, I love this movie.

If you love kooks and over-dramatic plots with suspense, and thrill, and theatrics and surprise then you'll love this as well!!

My favorite part is when Kathy Bates screams hysterically: MISERY CHASTAIN CANNOT BE DEAD. Because it was so over-the-top and in-your-face. I also love the part during the high-impact climactic scene between Annie and Paul when she maliciously called him a: c-o-c-k sucker. OMG so funny!!

IMHO, "Misery" is an updated version of the classic "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane" because Annie is just as nutty and attention-starved as Baby Jane Hudson. I don't think she had a specific obsession with Paul, instead, I think she was just obsessed with the idea of being near a warm body. She would have done this to anyone! But, Paul was absolutely the perfect victim to be kept hostage because he was such a normal, sane person who would never otherwise have been caught dead (pardon the pun) with Annie Wilkes.

Kathy Bates very rightfully won the Academy Award for her portrayal of this whack-job. She did such a bang-up job. As a matter of fact, there's even times when I'm watching "Fried Green Tomatoes" (another favorite of mine) when I actually think for a split second that I see Annie Wilkes return! James Caan was just as perfect as Kathy Bates although he received considerably less fanfare. But it's always like that, isn't it? The kooks always get the sympathy and the limelight while the otherwise sane are forgotten about. You gotta love it!