Movie: Misery
Star: James Caan, Kathy Bates
1990, MGM
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The film starts out calmly enough, with Caan’s character, a famous author, finishing his most recent novel, having his traditional single cigarette and his champagne. Then he gets in the car and drives down the mountain as the credits continue to roll. The scenery throughout the movie is of beautiful, idyllic country mountain snow scenes, very reminiscent of those portrayed in the King’s other great “isolation” film, The Shining. The scene as he drives through the building blizzard is tense, and accurately shows the difficulties of such a drive. Predictably, he runs off the road, and things get weird from that point.
Rescued by Kathy Bates’ character, we soon find out that she is Caan’s “Number One Fan,” a catchphrase still recognizable today. She’s completely obsessed with Caan’s “Misery” series of books, going to the extreme of having a little shrine built up in her living room with his picture there. She’s named her pet pig Misery, after the main character in his books. The film is full of great dialog, and Bates gets some especially memorable lines, showing the psychology of her character well; she’s too uptight to swear, yet she has no problem with kidnapping and torture. The film is bursting with lines along the likes of, “You’re a lying old dirty-birdy!”, “Isn’t that an oogy mess!”, and don’t forget her graphically brutal explanation of the term “hobbling.” She’s either psychotic or extremely bipolar, and her unpredictability makes everything far more tense.
The tension does build up. Caan learns that when the new book she forces him to write is finished, he too will be “finished.” As one plan after another is foiled, it’s never quite clear how he’s going to escape, or even if he will escape. The tension runs right up to the last minute, and never lets up. Looking back over the movie, there isn’t a single slow point in the entire film, even though there is really very little action. The tenseness of the plot is lightened a bit by the near-comical banter between the sheriff and his wife, but you know all along that the old man is no fool and that he’ll solve the case eventually.
It’s a masterpiece of tension, and caused me to wince in sympathy pains for a couple of scenes. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a unique film. Many successful horror films spawn sequel after sequel, but I cannot think of anything that really tried to imitate this film, either successfully or otherwise; it’s just that unique.
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