Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

I've reviewed nearly 250 movies in the last seven years, movies that have ranged from awesome to awful. But none of them are as bizarre, as weird, or as confusing as Death Bed: The Bed That Eats.

 

Read that title again. Go on, I dare you.

 

I'm not making that up. There is a real movie titled Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. It sounds like it should have been one of those fake trailers from Grindhouse, but trust me, this movie exists. I've seen it, and can tell you that it is very real. There's nothing that could ever possibly prepare you for a movie like this, and I'm not sure of how to properly introduce a review of it. I guess the only way to do it is to jump right into this and tell you about the bizarre movie that is Death Bed: The Bed That Eats.

 

My usual routine is to do an introductory paragraph, then move into a synopsis of the movie's plot. But the thing is, Death Bed has no plot. I know I've joked about certain movies having a plot so thin that it's practically nonexistent. But Death Bed literally has no plot at all. At least, there's no plot that I could ascertain after multiple viewings. (I kid you not, I've sat through this movie more than once.) It's as if somebody just came up with the title and didn't bother with anything else. So instead of a plot synopsis, I guess I'm stuck detailing the movie's basic concept.

 

There once was a demon that fell in love with a woman. He took human form so he could be with her, and created a bed in which they could be intimate. She died while they were together, and the demon's tears of grief caused the bed to become possessed. Those who come into contact with the bed are consumed by it, and as the movie progresses, we're privy to a number of victims being eaten by the death bed. Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.

 

I honestly don't know what to make of Death Bed. It is so bizarre that I can barely even comprehend its existence. The movie should not be real, and yet it is. But it almost wasn't however. Though it was filmed in 1972, a print of the movie was not made until 1977 (thus the date at the top of this review). While pirated bootlegs of the movie would circulate, Death Bed would not get any sort of official release until it hit DVD in 2003. Between the start of production and the DVD release, three decades passed. How is that even possible?! I've seen a few movies that sat on the shelf for a year or two before being released, but thirty? Holy crap.

 

Then again, maybe Death Bed wasn't released. Maybe it escaped instead. The movie is like some kind of experimental film school project, something meant to be seen by no more than a handful of people. It's so odd, so surreal, that I couldn't possibly imagine anyone believing that it would be commercially viable.

 

Death Bed was written, produced, and directed by George Barry, who had to be on some serious psychotropic drugs when he conceived this absurdity. His direction was so lackluster that I got the feeling that he wasn't sure what he was doing, and the script's narrative structure makes no sense (which may be the byproduct of Barry making the bold choice to avoid telling a story). With the lack of story, all that's left is merely a bunch of sequences loosely stitched together for no other reason than "just because." It's so utterly frustrating that it makes my head want to explode.

 

If anything's for sure, it's that when Barry assembled his cast, he didn't hire any actors. He must have hired a bunch of random people who drove by the set just before filming started. There's barely any dialogue, but there's still a wealth of terrible performances to be found. They barely react to anything that happens to them, unless you're counting indifference or dull surprise. The best example of this is when one character (played by William Russ, who would go on to play the dad on Boy Meets World) has the skin on his hands removed to the point that all that's left are the bones, and all he can do for the entire rest of the movie is stare at them in disbelief. Come on, man! Shouldn't you be screaming or panicking or reacting in any way? Are you on sedatives or something?

 

Death Bed is one of those movie's that's obscure for a reason. It's a movie whose imaginative concept and ridiculous name betrays its dull, plodding, downright boring nature.The movie is obtuse, aimless, bogged down by lifeless acting and direction. The concept is so absurd that it could make for a legendary B-movie if made by a cast and crew that had any sort of enthusiasm. I can imagine somebody like Roger Corman or Herschell Gordon Lewis making a movie like Death Bed and going absolutely balls out with the idea. But the version that currently exists, the one I just watched, is just a waste of a fun idea. Outside of Patton Oswalt using the movie as material for his standup routine, I expected so much more from a movie titled Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, and it's a shame we didn't get it.

 

Final Rating: *