Review: Death Bed: The Bed that Eats

Directed by George Barry
USA / 1977 / 80 minutes

I like bad movies. To me, they’re like a bad joke. I always laugh at a bad joke not because it’s funny, but because of the context. In short, I laugh at it, not with it. When I came across a blog about the top 10 worst movies, I had to give it a quick read. These were mostly movies I knew, like Nick Cage movies and such, but I had a look in the comments to see what other people thought were the worst. One title stood out… Death Bed: The Bed that Eats. I immediately switched over the NetFlix, and added it to the top of my queue. On to the review..

This movie is about a demon who’s become bed incarnate. This is a classic black 4-post canopied platform bed. It is very hungry, eating such things from people to apples.. but not the apple cores. It is picky. It once ate a man who was sick and rather than digesting him, he dropped him behind a picture.. where he would then sit for 70 years watching the horrors the bed would inflict upon its victims, and then relay them back to us, the viewers, as narration.

He told of the countless people, their stories, and the story of the bed itself.. how its hunger would bring back its own love from lost past. Through this narration, you get to know the bed, and it sets the personification.

On the other side, there is action to draw you into the more grizzly side of its actions. A group of three girls go to check out this old mansion, as an inspection before it is to be placed on the market for sale. They spend most of their time outdoors and in one room consisting of a fireplace, a picture hanging on the wall, and of course, the bed.

One question I asked myself was, “How does the bed eat?” I pictured something like Chairy from PeeWee’s Playhouse, and that people would be eaten by a mouth formed between mattress and box spring. This was not the case at all. I don’t want to give it away, but I will tell you that I was deathly afraid of going to sleep in my waterbed after watching this movie.

The acting was something of completely horrible.. if you’re looking for realistic reactions, emotions, etc. I don’t think the movie was supposed to seem natural. The characters were off, but to me that made the movie so much more interesting. In one scene, a lady wakes up while being eaten by the bed. She moans orgasmic in effort to escape from the bed. Once she makes it to the floor, she crawls during minutes of non-stop footage all the way to the stairs, up and partly out the door where she makes sounds her friend hears. Her friend makes it over in time to see the girl snatched up by a bed curtain, pulled back to the bed where she is eaten. Her friend struggled to help. She then sits on the floor, looking really bummed out. There were no screams in horror or any type of emotion that would tell that this is something out of the ordinary. It was completely unrealistic, but also one of my favorite scenes.

The imagery in this movie was perfect. The lighting was not very good, but was perfectly matched to the overall mood. The music played a very important part as well. There were laser sounds, and some munching sounds and some other weird noises. The aural experience alone would be worth the watch.

When it comes down to it, this is the type of bad movie I love to love. I don’t laugh at it; I laugh with it. It doesn’t try to be serious, but is subtle in letting you know that. At times, you can empathize a bit and take the movie seriously. As for the rest, take it with a grain of salt and it just may be the best of horror movie experiences.