Movies You Might Have Missed: Rob Reiner's Misery

Stephen King turns 70 this week, in many ways the modern day Dickens; the great populist writer of his generation who has consistently entertained the masses even if critical praise hasn’t always been quite so forthcoming. Those who are snobby about his work simply because of the genre are depriving themselves of a lifetime of enjoyment but the big screen adaptations are undeniably a mixed bag. King’s books tend to be epic in scope, he builds worlds only to destroy them, and most films struggle to capture this with relatively little time. There are exceptions of course, notably The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me (both, it should be noted, adapted from novellas), as well as The Green Mile, The Shining, Carrie and, perhaps the finest adaptation of them all, Misery (1990).

From This Is Spinal Tap in 1984 to A Few Good Men in 1992, director Rob Reiner managed one of the great streaks in cinema. Misery, adapted from King’s 1987 novel of the same name, remains the only Oscar-winning adaptation of his work as a result of Kathy Bates’ well-deserved Best Actress award. The author was so impressed with her performance that he later wrote Dolores Claiborne with her specifically in mind.

Unusually for King, Misery contains no supernatural elements. James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, a renowned author of romance novels who is rescued from a car crash by his “number one fan”, a psychotic nurse named Annie Wilkes (Bates) who proceeds to keep her hero captive while forcing him to write the stories she wants to read. William Goldman, who had worked with Reiner on The Princess Bride, wrote the screenplay and injected a strain of dark humour to go along with the claustrophobia of the source text. The horror here feels grounded in reality, not least because King based the Wilkes character on his own drug dependency at the time of writing.

King was reluctant to sell the rights to Misery for fear Hollywood wouldn’t do it justice and only changed his mind as a result of Reiner’s sterling work on Stand by Me. Everyone from Dustin Hoffman to Al Pacino turned down the Paul Sheldon role but Caan, who’d taken a break from acting in the 1980s after a period of personal tragedy, took the part and it ended up marking a major comeback for the star of The Godfather. His chemistry with Bates, a flawless screenplay and Reiner’s assured direction ensure this is a psychological thriller that deserves to be considered in the pantheon of greats alongside the likes of Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby.