20 90s Movie Scenes That Traumatized Us All

This one didn't just upset the audience; it also upset an awful lot of actors behind the scenes. So many actors refused to be in Misery, and in most cases, it was this particular scene that scared them off. Kathy Bates was the one who ultimately played the movie's psychopathic villain and, being a very gentle woman in real life, she found this extremely difficult to get through. 

Misery tells the story of Paul Sheldon (James Caan), an author who's in a car accident and then gets held prisoner by an insane fan named Annie Wilkes (Bates), who reads his new novel and discovers that he's killed off her beloved heroine. Enraged, Annie forces Paul to write a new version on pain of death. 

Annie is obviously crazy throughout, but we get the nastiest view of her madness yet when she sickeningly punishes Paul for an escape attempt. She puts a block of wood between his ankles and hobbles him with a sledgehammer, leaving him unable to walk. 

It's already a horrid scenario, but when you've got acting this brilliant from both Bates and Caan, it becomes one of the most viscerally disturbing acts of violence in horror history. You'll struggle to get Paul's cries of pain out of your head for days.