8 Disturbing Stephen King Book Moments That Were Cut From The Films

Stephen King's imagination is a dark and twisted place, to the extent that filmmakers must perform extensive surgery on his books when commiting them to celluloid.

Some things, it would seem, are just too disturbing for mainstream cinema, but as far as the horror master's fans are concerned, they're usually the best bits.

Controversy is just one of the reasons filmmakers might chose to leave certain scenes on the page. Some of the nightmarish stuff King has dreamed up over the years wouldn't necessarily work in a visual medium, and the sheer length his bulkier books makes streamlining a necessity.

Take the recent adaptation of his magnum opus, The Dark Tower, for instance. Its whopping great page count and high metaphysics made it basically unfilmable, and there's no way some of its darkest scenes will ever make it to film or TV, assuming there'll be another instalment in the future.

Even the new It adaptation that recently arrived in cinemas had to make extensive changes to the source material, despite director Andy Muschietti clearly setting out to be mostly faithful to the book.

That scene in Misery where Kathy Bates' deranged Annie Wilkes smashes Paul Sheldon's feet with a sledgehammer is gut-wrenching stuff. The viewer really feels it in the pit of their stomach and comes away with a newfound appreciation for walking unaided.

Naturally, you spare a thought for poor Paul, suffering a bone-shattering fate at the hands of a madwoman, but things could be worse - just ask his counterpart in the novel.

In the book, Annie doesn't subject his feet to a hammering. Oh no. She slices one of them clean off with an axe before cauterising the wound with a blowtorch.

A helpless Paul later tells her he's struggling to complete the novel she's forcing him to write because his typewriter is missing a letter, and he ends up also missing a thumb for his efforts.

Now this is the stuff of misery.