Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
(1977)
Director: George Barry
Cast: Demene Hall, William Russ, Julie Ritter
I once wrote
an email to the legendary film critic Roger Ebert. In my email, I asked
him about an anecdote that the equally legendary filmmaker Russ Meyer
once said. In the anecdote, Meyer told of a time that a third person
told Meyer that he was the perfect host when Meyer was cooking
breakfast for Ebert while Ebert was upstairs with a prostitute that
Meyer had got for him. I didn't expect an answer from Ebert, but a day
later I got back an email with Ebert simply stating, "A true gentleman
never tells." Thinking about that response reminds me of many other
remarks Ebert said over the years that were witty and/or insightful.
One of those remarks was, "A movie is not what it is about, but how it
is about." In other words, the premise of the movie isn't as important
as how that premise is executed and comes across to the audience. This
can be illustrated by putting two movies side by side that have the
same basic premise. First, take the 1998 Michael Keaton movie Jack Frost.
That movie, as you may recall, was about a man who is killed, but his
soul is reincarnated into that of a snowman. I have not seen the movie,
but I know most of the reviews it got were extremely negative. Critics
(including Ebert himself) found that the premise of the movie was so
bizarre, especially since it was taking place in a cinematic world that
was more or less straight-faced. They also criticized that none of the
characters in the movie were amazed by the miracle of a human being
becoming a snowman, never questioning or wondering about it. On top of
that, after becoming the snowman, the title character just concentrated
on having fun with his son instead of dealing internally and externally
with his new and strange lease of life.
As you can probably see from what I wrote, that movie
was definitely one that took a fantastic premise and totally botched
it. But now I would like to talk about another movie - another movie
that took the premise of someone's soul being reincarnated into that of
a snowman. It's a movie I reviewed a while back for this website, and
ironically it too was called Jack Frost,
and it was made a year before the Michael Keaton movie. But with this
movie, it was a case of the best being the first instead of the last
for a change. Sure, this take on a living snowman was no less absurd
and fantastic, but the makers of this movie completely understood this.
So instead of trying to sell the idea in a serious vein, they instead
decided play up the campy aspects. The movie was made into a horror
comedy. There were a number of dark elements in the movie, ranging from
sexual assault to old people being killed, but the attitude towards
this dark material was so crazy and so over the top, I (and I'm certain
a lot of other viewers) found myself laughing at all of it. When an old
person is killed with an axe - though by the handle of the axe being
thrust into the senior's mouth - and when the rape scene is done by the
killer snowman itself, you know that it was the right decision for
these filmmakers to have run riot with the premise. So with this
particular premise, there was clearly a right way to do it, and clearly
a wrong way to do it. Though I feel that I should add that I am in no
way saying that the absurd angle is always the right one to choose when
deciding how a particular premise is to be portrayed. For example, I
can only wonder what the reaction to movies like The Killing Fields
or Philadelphia
would have been had their subject matter been treated as comedies.
I have learned over the years from watching thousands of
films that not only are there right ways and wrong ways to approach
subject matter, that you also shouldn't immediately dismiss the chance
to watch a movie even if its approach at first mention seems, well,
pretty wrong-headed. The premise for the Mel Brooks movie The Producers
probably sounded bad to a lot of people, but it won an Academy Award
and is now considered a classic. On the other hand, while Jerry Lewis'
unreleased movie The
Day The Clown Cried
is reportedly by the few reports that have leaked out (including from
Lewis himself) to have been made in a completely wrong-headed and
inappropriate manner, I have to admit it - I would pay serious money to
be able watch it and see just how bad it is. So when I came across the
movie Death Bed:
The Bed That Eats,
I was very willing to watch it. True, from the title alone, the movie
sounded extremely bizarre and not having much chance of being good...
but I figured out at the very least that if it was bad, it would be an interesting
kind of bad. The movie concerns... well... a bed that eats people.
During the course of the movie, we learn that the bed originated by the
conjuring of a demon to have a place where he could get down and dirty
with a human woman he pined over. However, the woman died sometime
during the act, and in his grief, the demon caused the bed to become
possessed, with it needing nourishment every so often. This of course
means eating people who are foolish enough to enter the derelict
mansion the bed is currently stored in. We are treated to various
vignettes concerning people who stumble across the bed and are eaten,
much to the chagrin of the spirit of a mortal man that's trapped in a
painting that has full view of the bed. The spirit is trying its best
to warn potential victims and get the bed destroyed, but can it succeed?
That plot description should confirm to potential
viewers of Death
Bed: The Bed That Eats
that this is quite an unconventional horror movie, and would probably
get labelled by many of those people after watching it the simple
reaction of "Weird!". But it's not always a bad thing for a movie to
throw conventionality out the window and being strange; sometimes it
can be an excuse to display real creativity that you haven't seen in a
movie before. Death
Bed
certainly does things you've never witnessed elsewhere. Do you know of
another movie where the opening thirty seconds shows a black screen
while a sound akin to someone chewing an apple plays over the darkness?
Later in the movie, once the title object is introduced, we don't just
see it eat people, it also yawns or chuckles on occasion, as well as it
gasping in a horny manner when someone takes off their clothes. There
are more touches like that sprinkled throughout that do keep you alert
to see what additional and original touches will come next. And I will
admit that some of this strangeness is genuinely striking, enough that
you won't forget them for quite some time. Some of it is well done,
like the impressive shot where we see the imprisoned man's spirit
behind the painting while at the same time, we see a visitor studying
the painting. But I must admit that some of the weirdness is just plain
laughable, like when during a montage of headlines from a newspaper (The Daily Bugle - did
Marvel Comics later sue these filmmakers?) we read big headlines like, "Thousands Disappear!" and "Strange Munching Sounds Heard In Night!"
- without any more details then or later concerning these headlines.
Mostly, however, the strangeness isn't either striking
or unintentionally hilarious, but simply just weird; you often won't
know what to make out from it. There's a long montage of the bed's past
victims where circus music plays while one moment after another is put
together in a poorly edited manner that leaves you bewildered. Earlier
in the movie there is a dream where someone samples insects served on a
silver platter. I'm not quite sure of the purpose of many of these
displays of weirdness, but if they are attempts to make the movie scary
or even mildly creepy, they don't usually succeed. Strangely, much of
the movie's moments where the bed isn't prominent have more bite than
the whole bed munching menace. Writer/director George Barry manages to
make the outdoors feel really isolated, adding a sense that something
terrifying may very well be hiding nearby. There is also a moody
feeling throughout that seems appropriate, thankfully avoiding a
slicked-up approach that would break this somber feeling. Also, there
are occasional little touches - a door that opens by itself, the noise
of insects or the wind in the background - that at least get the horror
portion of the movie to get past the starting gate... but
unfortunately, not that much further from there. Barry doesn't simply
handle the big shocks very well. The first victims of the bed are
killed while the bed's curtains are not pulled back. While many
subsequent victims' deaths aren't as hidden, there is still a really
restrained feeling to them. In fact, it's quite low key at times. This
even includes a scene where a character's hands are stripped to the
bone; you simply won't believe how casually the character (or the other
character with him) reacts to this predicament.
While the direction of the horror portions of Death Bed: The Bed That
Eats is pretty dismal for the most part, what hurts the movie
even more is how boring
writer/director Barry frequently makes the movie to be. None of the
characters in the movie are all that memorable; you won't care one way
or another if they are saved from being eaten or not. Also, despite the
running time just being 77 minutes in length, there are some really
tedious patches, particularly towards the end. There's once scene where
a badly injured woman is desperately (and very slowly) trying to crawl away
from the bed, and it takes forever
to play out, and it's all for nothing - she eventually gets sucked back
in by the bed and is then quickly disposed of. There's clearly not a
heck of a lot of story here, so quite often we in the audience have to
look for stupidly written material to liven our sleepy brains; I'm not
sure why Barry thought it wise to have more than one character provide
narration, for one thing. The movie's story more often than not just
seems to be a jumble of many different ideas Barry had, but Barry not
making the effort to link all of this material together in a way that
makes one firm story. Towards the end, Barry almost seems to have
painted himself into a corner and makes desperate moves to tidy things
up. He should have paid himself to do some extra rewrites, but judging
from the look of the movie, he apparently didn't have much money to
spend. We have all the trademarks of 1970s backyard filmmaking,
including lousy day for night photography, no blanks for guns (a
character has to shake a gun while a gunshot plays on the soundtrack),
and characters being filmed at a distance or just off-camera while
dialogue is dubbed in. Obviously, Death Bed: The Bed That
Eats
isn't going to get anywhere near satisfying most viewers, whether they
are die hard horror fans or not. As for viewers of really strange and
bizarre independent cinema who are willing to put up with mostly
extreme shoddy filmmaking and storytelling, would they like to go to
this Bed?
Well... let me sleep on
it, I'll give you an answer in the morning.
(Posted May 14, 2022)
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See also: The Baby, Blood Freak, Sonny Boy
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