Continuity mistake: After Paul burns the manuscript on the grill, Annie begins to take it out of the room after pouring water on it. In the shot in the room, the grill is smoking, but in the shot from the doorway, the papers have suddenly stopped smoking and there is no smoke anywhere else in the room.
Deliberate mistake: Kathy Bates gives James Caan his Noveril a number of times, but one particular time Kathy gives him his Noveril and leaves the room. When the camera shows James Caan holding the capsules between his thumbs and forefingers, it is apparent that they are not James Caan's hands in this shot.
Continuity mistake: When Buster puts the post-it note on the board, it moves about between shots.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Paul falls down the basement stairs we see a shot with a case of "Canadian" beer behind his head. In another shot the case is covered up with a blanket.
Continuity mistake: When Sheldon has knocked Annie out the first time you see a view of the room. But the ash is in a neat pile and not spread out as it would have been after he grabbed some of it and stuffed it in her mouth.
Continuity mistake: When Annie refills her wine glass when having the toast, the amount of wine poured changes from under a third to about three quarters between shots.
Continuity mistake: When it starts to snow, and Paul puts the windshield wipers on, the rate that they swing differs between shots.
Visible crew/equipment: When Paul is in the kitchen, he looks at the knives. In the stove is the reflection of a person with a white shirt, but Paul is wearing a red shirt.
Continuity mistake: When Annie Wilkes is shaving Paul Sheldon, when she is almost done she stops shaving and talks to him about something briefly. Before she stops talking there is still some shaving cream under his nose. Then when the camera goes back to Sheldon, after she's done talking, there is no shaving cream under his nose.
Continuity mistake: Buster parks his car outside Annie's house and is then shot inside her home. Then in a following wideshot of Annie's house, the car has vanished...
Continuity mistake: In the first scene, where Paul just finishes his book, the typewriter he is on seems to change from a big, old typewriter to a newer, small electric one.
Character mistake: When Paul is looking through Annie's album, there is an article on her as a nurse. The headline has her name as Annie M. Wilkes. But, in the accompanying photo her name is listed as Annie C. Wilkes.
Continuity mistake: When Annie shows Paul her gun, she says "I might put bullets in it," then leaves the room. It's pouring with rain, but when Annie steps out the front door, you can see her hair is already wet before being outside.
Continuity mistake: When Annie lifts Paul off the floor and lays him back into the bed, there is initially no tape over the brace on Paul's left knee. In the next shot, which is somewhat bird's eye view, there are three pieces of white tape over the brace, then there are none again when she finishes lying him down.
Continuity mistake: Paul is eating in bed and by the plate are some pain killers. The position of the pain killers in relation to the plate changes between a few shots.
Character mistake: When the sheriff questions hotel clerk the clerk tells him he left in his 65 Mustang. It was in fact a 66 Mustang that went over the edge.
Factual error: When Paul hits Annie in the head with the 15 pound typewriter, she is only incapacitated for 2 or so seconds and has no bruising or bleeding on her face. One would think a typewriter this heavy would at least cause some type of injury to her face, such as bruising or bleeding to her face and would incapacitate her for longer than 2 few seconds.
Other mistake: When Annie shoots the sheriff in the back, he fall forwards on the staircase where he stood. Annie walks down without moving around the corpse of the sheriff. She just advances forward as if he isn't there.
Continuity mistake: Shots of the roof show two different amounts of snow and it alternates between the two for the whole movie.
Continuity mistake: Just after Annie burns Paul's book, she gives him his 2 pills. When she hands them to him, he looks at them close up to the camera - check out his thumbnails. They look very short and bitten down to the core. But if you check out scenes just after, or even just before they look longer and normal.
Answer: Simple answer, she was a psychopathic killer. She was a nurse, and infants were accessible, helpless victims.
raywest ★