Oh, Annie Wilkes, you crazy dirty birdie, you.

That’s right, denizens…my selections aren’t always going to be the heroines of the story. And that’s the only spoiler that I’m going to give you for Misery and its leading lady. Yes, this movie came out in 1990, but I know that some of you haven’t yet seen it. Or some of you haven’t seen it in a long time. I urge you to remedy this. This might very well be one of the best screen adaptations of a Stephen King horror novel yet filmed (I would even contend that it holds its own against non-horror adaptations like The Shawshank Redemption).

The plot revolves around writer Paul Sheldon, most famous for a series of novels featuring a character named Misery Chastain. When Sheldon crashes his car during a blizzard while driving through an isolated section of Colorado, he’s lucky to be rescued by Annie Wilkes, a local nurse who just happens to be his “number one fan.”

No three more frightening words exist in the English language, thanks in great deal to Kathy Bates. In fact, the role of Annie Wilkes not only instantly tagged Bates as a major-league Hollywood player, but also earned her a Best Actress Oscar, the first ever awarded to an actress for a role in a horror movie. Even King loved her performance