No Good Very Bad Movies 9: The one that nobody saw

 

Title: Death Bed aka Death Bed The Bed That Eats

What Year?: 1977 (copyright)/ 2003 (DVD release)

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Guinnocent!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write, I’m finishing up a Halloween lineup, and I decided it was time for one more entry in my “worst” series. In planning this out, my biggest concern has been how many I could do without destroying my morale and possibly my sanity. So far, I’ve surprised myself by doing a good chunk of what I had planned in a single run earlier in the month. I decided that if I was going to do another installment this month, it would be something very, very weird. That immediately brought me to one particular movie I not only had in mind at the start but considered in creating the ratings. Without further ceremony, I present Death Bed, a film so odd it doesn’t feel like a movie.

Our story begins with a couple frolicking in an old castle, where they discover a bed that looks old and sketchy enough to have evolved its own species of parasites. When the pair try out the bed, they don’t just get an embarrassing infection, but are eaten by the bed itself, which seemingly dissolves them with foaming juices then sucks them down. It’s all narrated by the ghost of a previous victim, trapped inside the painting. We learn that the bed is a malign entity that has been devouring people for decades if not centuries, created and inhabited by a demon that once tried to seduce a mortal woman. When a new group of waifs arrive, the bed promptly begins snarfing the lot of them, until only one wayward girl and her brother remain. In its moment of triumph, the powers of the bed weaken enough for the talkative ghost to make contact with the living. He finally reveals how the monstrous furniture can be destroyed- but carrying out the plan will cost the survivor her life!

Death Bed was produced, written and directed by George Barry in his only feature film credit. The film was reportedly shot as early as 1972, mainly at the Gar Wood mansion near Detroit. The film assembled a cast who had or went on to other roles, including William Russ of Boy Meets World and the late Demene Hall. The film’s narration was provided by Patrick Spencer-Thomas, otherwise known mainly as a sound technician, with most or all additional dialogue being dubbed. Per Barry’s accounts, the film was never released theatrically or as an authorized home video. However, the film received a series of “bootleg” releases on VHS without his knowledge, creating a limited cult following. Beginning in 2003, the film received authorized release on disc and later digital streaming. A similarly titled film Deathbed was released by Charles Band in 2002, credited as based on Barry’s film.

For my experiences, this is one I remember hearing about a few years back, but I suspect I would have run across it much earlier. I even had a few misbegotten ideas of my own along similar lines (which I long since found independently invented in Brian Lumley’s tale “No Way Home”). What has stood out to me is that the concept of the film seems to attract as much notoriety as the movie itself. On still further consideration, it’s an egregiously “Seventies” movie. As such, there are films that are at least superficially comparable, like Zardoz, Shanks and especially House (the Japanese one!). It’s all the more impressive that, even in their company, this film stands out as uniquely mindboggling, probably outdoing all but House for pure strangeness.

Moving forward, when I did get around to watching this movie, my strongest reaction, as recounted above, was that this is something that should not be counted as a “movie” at all. What it should be considered is, of course, a problem I have considered frequently. The vibe I get is that of a very old-school book of fairy tales brought to life. Almost all the story is told through narration; most of the shots are closeups and tableaus with a bare minimum of movement; and when the characters are supposed to be “speaking”, we usually see the actors’ lips clearly not moving. On analysis, this approach isn’t quite as unusual as it sounds, but the closest counterparts are very far afield, in animation and even silent films. That, in turn, reveals the extent of the problem of giving it a rating. By almost any objective standard, this is easily one of the most incompetent films on record, yet calling it a bad movie feels like calling Big Rigs a bad video game. It’s hard to judge a work when it’s unclear if the creators understood the “rules” of the medium and genre it’s supposed to represent, harder still when they repeatedly and willfully break them.

As often happens, these ground-rules arguments nearly overshadow the film itself, and I must say, this was always in the movie’s favor. The depictions of the bed provide a kind of dark humor, complete with chewing sounds and meal-themed title cards. There’s a certain amount of biological logic in the feeding process, though it would really make more sense if we didn’t see as much blood or gore. What I find most intriguing are the lesser meals that get eaten, like an a bucket of chicken, an apple and a fly whose demise is heard rather than seen. But then, as often happens, the weaknesses crop up around the edges. To begin with, I’m not satisfied with the timeline, which puts the origin of the demon-bed barely before the 20^th century (through a series of hilariously inept tombstones) while everything else screams Medieval/ Renaissance era. Further problems arise from wonky lighting (also an issue in Shanks), which usually makes the mansion and its surroundings as ominous as a duck pond on a sunny summer day. There’s also not much done to make the characters interesting, even on this film’s strange terms. Finally, there are way too many moments that are nonsensical without achieving the surreal quality of the film’s better moments, such as the brother staring at his skeletonized but intact hands after attempting to destroy the bed.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one closest to a conventional sequence. As we go into the final act, Ms. Hall’s character, the only person of color in the cast, goes to bed while the others are looking for a vanished companion. As she sleeps, her friend appears to her in a dream, a jarring and poignant moment since we already know her fate. She suddenly awakes, to find herself already enveloped in the bed’s foam. Somehow, she pulls free, covered in blood. She has to crawl for the door, and it’s believable and grueling to watch. This goes on, and on, and the live-action-illustration style makes it feel even longer. She actually makes it to the door, which is when one of the sheets snares her and drags her back in like an indoor Sarlacc. It’s truly the moment that establishes the demon bed as a credible threat, and gets us invested in the fate of it’s prey, so of course we see nothing more about it.

In closing, I feel the need to explain not the rating, which I have explained already, but the classification. Between Space 1979 and the Revenant Review, I introduced the Irreproducible Oddity and the Unnatural/ Improbable Experiment as categories. At the time, I had a definite rationale for the distinction, but I will admit that over time, how I use one or the other has gotten a little random. For this one in particular, my decision was a matter of context. There is no question that this movie is unlike any made before, in its own time or since, yet that in itself is well within the “weird for the sake of weird” spirit of the 1970s. The truly ironic part is that for all its unconventionality, it's still not confusing and annoying on the level of far too many '70s films. The best thing I can say about it is that it forces the viewer to think about where out expectations of what constitutes a “movie” came from and how many other turnings there were along the way. That is praise enough from me, and reason enough to give it a look. With that, I’m done for today.

Image credit Movies And Mania.