Adam Baran

After I got finished watching Frightmare this weekend, I was quick to pop in Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, an exploitation independent (as Stephen Thrower calls them in Nightmare USA) from 1977 that was never released officially until a DVD release in 2003. In the meantime, it was bootlegged and pirated and released in the public domain in Europe and Asia, developing a cult fan base among vidiots and cult-horror film junkies. I’m a little late to the Death Bed cult, as the kids at Kim’s have been telling me about it for years, but after watching it I’m fully on the “this movie is genius and a real work of trash-art” tip.

Here’s the Opening:

It’s the most ludicrous premise on Earth, a possessed bed, a demon’s blood seeping into the bed, making it a hungry monster - though it’s sort of no more absurd than some of the cheesy monster movies that came out of the 50’s and 60’s with tiny animals growing to monster size after coming in contact with radioactive materials. The funny thing is the conceit of the movie is that people have to lie down on the bed, which immediately sucks them in, using a sort of piss-colored acid to rot away their skin, while the spirit of a consumptive Aubrey Beardsley-esque artist imprisoned behind a painting on the wall watches and acts as the omniscient narrator, observing, and ultimately helping to vanquish the cursed bed. The film could be described as sort of a schlocky Ed Wood affair meets Jean Rollin-esque Euro Horror meets hauntingly weird surrealistic nightmare. There’s completely hilarious sequences like the bed develops an indigestion from eating too many people, and in the next sequence we see it eating a bottle of Pepto Bismol. But as Stephen Thrower points out: “Death Bed can be silly alright, but it’s humor is all over the scale, from slapstick to irony: even on first viewing it’s not something you simply laugh at.”

Unless of course, you’re Patton Oswalt, who hilariously skewers the entire production, in a completely admirable way on his album “Werewolves and Lollipops.” You can tell he really likes it, even though he puts up a good front. Enjoy.

I’m sure his hilarious bit drove many of his fans to check out Death Bed: The Bed that Eats, and that’s just fine by me. The film is truly something special, an inspired piece of insanity from the pit of the 70’s bargain basement horror bin.

Okay, that’s enough about that. Time to call it a night. I’ll just lie down here on my bed, and AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! FUCCCKKKKK!!!!