The infamous scene where Annie Wilkes hobbles Paul Sheldon in Misery is cinematic legend, but what she did to him in Stephen King’s book was worse. Misery is one of King’s more intimate tales of terror, focusing on as it does almost entirely on two characters in a single room, and that’s true on the screen as well. Thankfully, this never becomes a detriment to the film, as lead actors Kathy Bates and James Caan turn in excellent, captivating performances as a psychopathic fan and the writer she takes hostage.
Directed by Rob Reiner, who also helmed the beloved King adaptation Stand by Me, Misery sometimes get talked about as if it isn’t a horror movie. There are different types of horror, though, and while it might not feature a slasher killing teens or a giant, rampaging monster, Misery is most definitely a horror story. This is even more the case in King’s book, in which Annie Wilkes is even more sinister and unstable than she is in the film.
Of course, it’s impossible to think of Misery without reliving the shocking scene in which Bates’ Annie takes a sledgehammer and uses it to viciously break the ankles of Caan’s Paul, hobbling him. This act makes it seem truly hopeless for Paul, and is hard to watch, even though it really isn’t that explicit. However, in the book, Annie does something even worse to Paul.
Misery’s Infamous Hobbling Scene Is Worse in Stephen King’s Book
In the book version of Misery, when Annie decides she needs to make totally sure Paul won’t escape his room again, she doesn’t simply break his ankles with a sledgehammer. No, that would be too easy. After all, it’s possible his legs could eventually recover. Instead, Stephen King wrote Annie to straight up chop Paul’s foot off with an axe, then use a propane torch to cauterize the wound so he wouldn’t bleed out. At the end of the movie, Paul is seen walking with the use of a cane, but losing a limb is a much harder thing to physically move on from.
When it came time to adapt Misery for the screen, the decision was made to have Annie hobble Paul instead of amputating his foot, due to two factors. One, there was concern over the level of gore that would be called for if they staged King’s original scene, and two, Rob Reiner and crew wanted Paul to emerge victorious at the end of the film, and felt that Paul losing his foot was too harsh a penalty for him to have to deal with going forward. The change worked well though, creating an iconic movie scene, and one that’s still plenty brutal in its own right.
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