Never Explain How: Death Bed Is Good, Actually
To begin with, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a horror movie where the villain is a bed, a gigantic bed in a stark black basement that laughs and snores and, as promised, eats. It was written and directed by George Barry with an attempted release in 1977, lost for decades, and officially released at last in 2003.
Unexpectedly, though, for an indie horror flick with its wacky premise written into its title, Death Bed is good. Not great — it’s limited by its minuscule budget and inexperienced creative team — but good enough that I recommend it whenever possible. It has a well-balanced tone, strong camerawork, and a surrealist sensibility all its own.
1. Premise
Death Bed divides into four sections: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and The Just Dessert. Lunch and Dinner include multiple flashbacks to decades or even centuries past, but the main, present-day thread of the film socially connects the victims of Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert.
The manner in which the bed eats its victims varies across the film, but in essence, the bed envelops objects, limbs, and whole bodies in narrow crevices between two sections of its sheeted mattress. These crevices are supernatural, and are only physical as a film effect — not apparent to the victims before they climb upon…
