Why I Love Death Bed: The Bed That Eats | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I Love Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

16 Mar 2023

Words by Mark Hanson

A person wearing glasses and a suit, lying in bed and reading a green book.
A person wearing glasses and a suit, lying in bed and reading a green book.
George Bar­ry’s 1977 inde­pen­dent hor­ror, about a homi­ci­dal piece of fur­ni­ture with a vora­cious appetite, is a delight­ful­ly imag­i­na­tive and whol­ly orig­i­nal rel­ic worth seek­ing out.

In a 2007 Pat­ton Oswalt stand-up spe­cial, one of the comedian’s bits involves a hor­ror film that he has recent­ly dis­cov­ered. I’m not mak­ing this up. Go IMDb this. This is a real movie. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats Peo­ple,” pro­claims a gid­dy Oswalt. And it’s about a bed…that’s evil…and it eats peo­ple. That’s the whole movie!”

Oswalt slight­ly mist­i­tles the film, but a quick IMDb search does indeed con­firm that he isn’t mak­ing this up. Back in the 1970s, an Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film­mak­er named George Bar­ry real­ly did make a movie called Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, the title of which is some­how even more allur­ing with­out Peo­ple” added on to the end, most­ly in that it opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ties for what the bed in ques­tion could poten­tial­ly con­sume. Per Oswalt’s large­ly deri­sive rou­tine, Death Bed’s con­cept alone cer­tain­ly invites a cer­tain lev­el of ridicule. Yet this absurd premise is effec­tive­ly a dev­il­ish tro­jan horse; or rather, a duvet that cov­ers up one of the most nov­el and imag­i­na­tive psy­chotron­ic expe­ri­ences of the era.

Open­ing with a black screen accom­pa­nied by a sound­track of pro­nounced chomp­ing sounds, Death Bed wastes no time intro­duc­ing us to its tit­u­lar mon­ster. The bed is an ornate four-poster mod­el, tucked away in a dun­geon-like guest house next to a man­sion on an aban­doned rur­al estate. As a pro­ces­sion of human fod­der wan­ders onto the prop­er­ty – which the film breaks into chap­ters cheek­i­ly titled Break­fast”, Lunch”, Din­ner” and, final­ly, Just Desserts” – the bed’s trag­ic back­sto­ry is grad­u­al­ly doled out. Forged in the late 19th cen­tu­ry by a wind demon in order to con­sum­mate his feel­ings for a woman, the bed then became infused with its creator’s grief and rage when she con­se­quent­ly died dur­ing the act.

In one of the many bizarre facets of Death Bed, this calami­tous saga is con­veyed to us by the spir­it of Aubrey Beard­s­ley, a real-life tuber­cu­lo­sis-strick­en 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish illus­tra­tor who acts as the film’s nar­ra­tor. Trapped behind a paint­ing, the artist (played by notable rock music crit­ic Dave Marsh) is doomed to watch the bed sati­ate its hunger, seen in a series of flash­backs that bring us up to the present. Beard­s­ley guides us through these tales of for­mer occu­pants – from aris­to­crats to broth­el patrons to gang­sters-in-hid­ing – as they all meet their hideous plush and fiber end. You are noth­ing if not grotesque,” Beard­s­ley intones towards the bed at one point, Except hun­gry, of course.”

Like the bed itself, George Barry’s film endured its own tumul­tuous his­to­ry. Shot in Detroit and painstak­ing­ly edit­ed over the course of sev­er­al years, Death Bed was com­plet­ed in 1977, only for attempts to find dis­tri­b­u­tion com­ing up emp­ty. Nev­er­the­less, the film seeped out into the world via an unau­tho­rized boot­leg released in Britain in the ear­ly 80s, with fur­ther dubs sub­se­quent­ly pop­ping up in video shops around the world.

From there, the leg­end of Death Bed would prop­a­gate in sub­ter­ranean film cir­cles, with Bar­ry remain­ing com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to it all until see­ing an online review in 2001. At this point, efforts were made to final­ly give Death Bed a prop­er release, with the film offi­cial­ly debut­ing at the San Fran­cis­co Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val and then on DVD from home video label Cult Epics in 2003, a full quar­ter cen­tu­ry after its ini­tial completion.

Two women in a dimly lit room, one wearing a white dress, the other in darker clothing. Ornate curtains and furniture suggest an opulent setting.

Of course, the ques­tion that nat­u­ral­ly aris­es when approach­ing Death Bed is: how exact­ly does this bed eat? The answer lies in some of the more mem­o­rable low-bud­get spe­cial effects work of the time. The process begins with a yel­low foam that ris­es from the mat­tress, envelop­ing the vic­tim and suck­ing them down into the bed’s bel­ly, an acid aquar­i­um of sorts that strips the flesh right off.

In one sig­na­ture moment, a char­ac­ter reach­es down into the foam to unsuc­cess­ful­ly try to save a friend, only for his hands to re-emerge in a skele­tal state. As the film’s title sug­gests, it isn’t just peo­ple that the bed craves either – a pic­nic lunch, con­sist­ing of a buck­et of fried chick­en and a bot­tle of wine, is scarfed down at one point, with the bed spit­ting up the garbage after­wards. It even faces the odd diges­tive prob­lem, suck­ing back a bot­tle of Pep­to Bis­mol after one par­tic­u­lar­ly hearty meal.

Beyond Death Bed’s pro­nounced sense of humour, per­haps the most strik­ing aspect of Barry’s vision is its hyp­not­ic atmos­phere. The film was based on a dream Bar­ry had, and employs an accord­ing­ly sur­re­al aes­thet­ic in its exe­cu­tion, fre­quent­ly end­ing up clos­er in tone to film­mak­ers like Jean Rollin or Jess Fran­co. Bar­ry claimed inspi­ra­tion from both Euro­pean art house films and Amer­i­can exploita­tion fare, and Death Bed hits upon a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry bal­ance between the two. A late escape attempt in which a wound­ed char­ac­ter pulls free from the bed and crawls in an excru­ci­at­ing­ly slow man­ner towards the door is at once fun­ny, grip­ping and oth­er­world­ly; a moment of dura­tional weird­ness that brings to mind the kitschy spi­der web sequence in Mas­si­mo Pupillo’s leg­endary 1965 Ital­ian hor­ror odd­i­ty Bloody Pit of Horror.

As a result, Death Bed has accrued some crit­i­cal sup­port since its re-emer­gence, most notably from his­to­ri­an Stephen Throw­er in his sem­i­nal cult film text Night­mare U.S.A. Still, the film’s rep­u­ta­tion has most­ly remained one of mock­ery and even­tu­al dis­re­gard, with the film attain­ing that tired label of being so-bad-it’s‑good”.

When Bar­ry sad­ly passed away at the end of 2022, there was vir­tu­al­ly no news about him or the fas­ci­nat­ing lega­cy of the one and only film he ever made. Twen­ty years on from its long-delayed offi­cial pre­mière, Death Bed deserves to take its place among the all-time great mid­night-movie expe­ri­ences. And even for those that are sim­ply crav­ing a hit of hor­ror mad­ness that deliv­ers in spades on its out­landish con­ceit, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is more than will­ing to whet one’s appetite.

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