The Best of King.

We spent the month of November tackling a variety of monsters. From James Whale’s Frankenstein (listen) to Gena Rowlands in The Skeleton Key (listen) to the human villains of  Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (listen), it’s been a wild month.

For the last episode of November, Trace and I returned to the world of Stephen King adaptations with Rob Reiner’s 1990 take on Misery. The film has become a classic, but at the time, it struggled to cast a male lead, and star Kathy Bates was best known for Broadway, not film and television. Obviously, a lot has changed in the intervening 35 years!

In Misery, novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan) suffers a devastating car accident on a treacherous mountain road. Rescued by Annie Wilkes (Bates), his number one fan, Sheldon soon realizes that he’s being held hostage because Annie can’t accept the death of protagonist Misery Chastain in the final book of the series.

If Paul wants to survive Annie’s wild mood swings, threats of murder/suicide, and – in the film’s most memorable scene – an excruciating hobbling, he’ll need to fulfill Annie’s request and write an epic resurrection novel for Misery. If not, he might be the one who winds up dead!

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Episode 363: Misery (1990) feat. Roz Hernandez

Squirrel away those pills and burn that manuscript because we’re talking about Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery (1990).

Joining us for the discussion is comedian Roz Hernandez, who has begun (but maybe never finished?) every King novel.

We’re talking Kathy Bates’ Academy award winning performance as Annie Wilkes, a horny Sheriff & Deputy combo, and multiple fiery manuscripts.

Plus: toxic (queer) fandom, Lauren Bacall’s smoker voice, the FX we do – and don’t – see, and pranking Barnes & Noble employees

Cross out Misery!

Coming Up Next: We’re finally digging into a listener request that’s been years in the making: 1977’s religious thriller, The Sentinel!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 437 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal S02 episodes 11-13, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Rian Johnson’s threequel Wake Up Dead Man, Paul Feig’s The Housemaid, plus not one but TWO audio commentaries: Knives Out and Scream 3 (from our live appearance at Soho Horror Fest earlier this year)