Death Bed The Bed that Eats

Watched July 9, 2012

1977
Starring a bunch of people I've never heard of. (I did check it out on IMDB and it turns out that the brother is played by  William Russ who's been in a lot of stuff, including playing Corey Matthew's dad on Boy Meets World.)

I was somewhat recommended this movie because I had a terrible idea for a moment about making a movie about a vampire stop sign. What the concepts share is a bizarre villain, in this case a bed that eats people. This movie was never theatrically released, instead being traded underground on VHS until being officially released on DVD in 2003.

The first thing that struck me is that there really isn't much dialogue, but there are a ton of inner monologues and somewhat of a narrator voice. The basic plot is this: several hundred years ago a demon fell in love with a maiden. The demon created this bed for them, but the maiden died. The demon was so distraught he cried tears of blood on the bed. This made the bed come to life and it was filled with a lust for blood. The bed found a home in a castle and ate people that tried to sleep on it.  At some point a really sick artist was using the bed, but the bed didn't want to eat him.  Instead the bed trapped the artist behind a drawing of the bed. The bed and the trapped artist became sort of friends as the bed would give the artist gifts from the people it ate, rings and such.  Now in the present day 1970's, three young ladies come to the castle for a retreat. The first girl is super paranoid that no one likes her, so she is the first to be eaten by the bed. The bed is really good at cleaning up the mess so the other two ladies don't know that the first girl is dead. Sadly, the murder scenes are pretty mundane. The bed doesn't have awesome teeth, instead it just envelopes the person when they lay on it. Then you see a screen of stomach acid digesting the victim. The second woman is almost eaten but she managed to very slowly crawl away before the bed grabs her with a sheet arm and finishes her. The last women watches the bed eat her friend, collapsing in shock. Luckily her brother has been looking for her so he shows up and tries to stab the bed. The bed cannot be killed by conventional means so when the brother stabs the bed, his hands are dissolved by the bed's stomach acid. By chance, the bed demon finally falls sleeps which lets the artist in the painting talk to people. The artist tells the sister how to destroy the bed. She follows the instructions and the bed bursts into flames, but not before the women's body is inhabited by the maiden that the demon loved.

The plot unfolds very slowly and the deaths are pretty tame. The explanation of the bed's history doesn't come out until more than halfway into the movie. Everything happens painfully slow and the supposed climatic scenes are still terrible. The best part is when the brother's hands are melted off and he just stares at them, then they burn his hand bones in the fire.

I own this movie, as a friend gave it to me, but I never want to watch it again. The idea is fun in theory and could be translated into an interested 15 minute movie. But this movie really doesn't work even if you like bad movies.  If you do check out the bonus feature, the director gives a very detailed way on how to use the internet and message boards.