15 Stephen King stories ranked from heartwarming to horrifying

8. Misery

If you see the film adaptation of Misery, you’ll see a familiar face—Kathy Bates. Though she would later star as the title character in the film version of Dolores Claiborne, Bates had established herself as a memorable Stephen King villain in 1990’s Misery.

The movie is adapted from King’s 1987 novel of the same name. It follows poor, miserable Paul Sheldon, a writer who has risen to fame for his pulpy, breathless romance novels. He’s gotten sick of his main character, the beleaguered Misery Chastain, however, and wants to kill her off. That would be all well and good—“kill your darlings” isn’t the worst writing advice, after all—if it weren’t for a poorly timed auto accident.

Oh a whim, Paul decides to drive from Los Angeles to New York, rather than taking a plane as originally planned. All goes well at first until he’s stuck in a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado.

Paul’s car crashes in a remote area. He’s horribly injured and faces a cold, lonely death at the bottom of a ravine. Good thing he’s found by Annie Wilkes, who happens to be both a retired nurse and his “number one fan.” Annie’s so happy to see him that she takes the injured Sheldon back to her home instead of, you know, a hospital full of doctors.

Things get darker when the extent of Annie’s fandom is revealed. She learns that Misery has been killed off and demands that Paul discard his new book in order to bring Misery back to life. She also starts to withhold painkillers, food, and water in erratic attempts to either punish Sheldon or gain his trust.

And those are some of the gentlest things Annie Wilkes does to Paul. If you think the infamous “hobbling” scene in the film is bad, then you should really gird your loins for what happens in King’s novel.