Description
Prepare yourselves... The strangest bedtime story ever told! Released for the first time here after 25 years in obscurity, Cult Epics brings you DEATH BED, George Barry's uniquely weird journey through a world of wind demons, carnivorous furnishings and the spirit of Aubrey Beardsley!
At the edge of a grand estate, near a crumbling old mansion lies a strange stone building with just a single room. In the room there lies a bed. Born of demonic power, the bed seeks the flesh, blood and life essence of unwary travellers… Three pretty girls arrive on vacation, searching for a place to spend the night. Instead, they tumble into nightmares - and the cruel, insatiable hunger of the Bed! DEATH BED is a one-of-a kind experience: comic, horrific and dreamlike, that truly has to be seen to be believed. Discover this neglected marvel of American horror for yourself!
Customer Reviews:
I Heard About This Flick at a Patton Oswalt show.......2007-01-31
Patton Oswalt did a killer rountine about this flick at a Comedians of Comedy show that I caught last year and I had to see this flick. Some friends of mine gathered at my place and we had a blast ripping this flick apart. If you love to give bad movies the Mystery Science Theater treatment, then this flick is for you.
Death Bed - The Bed that Eats.......2005-09-04
This Movie was A huge letdown, It was boring, & as cheesy as they come, I don't want to waste to much time on this review, Look elsewhere for entertainment, Trust ME!
Jack Pot!.......2004-12-19
I never bought a single VHS tape over the years. But with the advent of DVD I find myself spending unreasonable sums of money on DVD's. These things beg to be collected, and it is the horror genre where I seem to be spending most of my efforts and cash. Most of the time I buy DVDs where I've previously seen the movie, but perhaps a third of the time I'm buying based on the favorable reviews given on Amazon, particularly where key words, phrases or concepts are mentioned by the reviewer which I find appealing.
The key words, phrases, concepts for "Death Bed" are: psychedelic, astmospheric, bizarre, sensuous, comfortable, surreal, dreamlike, artistic....and obscure. This is the type of movie I search out. I can't believe there isn't more buzz about this film as I've shared it with a few friends and they've responded with similar enthusiasm. This is just a hidden gem. It is not insanely scary, but it has a elegant weirdness to it that I think many people will find satisfying.
The story line has already been explained: hidden little cottage out in nowhere, with a big, beautiful bed in it which invites intruders to either nap on or get naked in. The bed then consumes them. At first I thought the "eating" scenes were cheesey, but then the movie showed some scenes inside the bed as it "digested" its prey, and these scenes are very well done and surreal.
The major artisitic fluorish of the movie is that it is narrated by the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley who is held captive inside the wall behind one of his paintings next to the bed. He reveals to you the history of the house, the bed, and many of the historic victims over the past century. The elegance with which this is presented can not be overstated, especially for a film which did not have a big budget. The bed gives Beardsley gifts of the deceased's jewelry, but Beardsley still yearns to be free. The actor who speaks Beardsley's voice was BRILLIANT, his pacing, accent, inflections are hypnotic and perfect.
There is another strange series of scenes displaying a woman inside an underground coffin on the estate of the cottage and nearby mansion. I can't recall her exact role, but the scenes of her emerging back to consciousness are very effective and scary.
I hesitate to criticize this movie at all because it was so satisfying. I think it is an American film, and I perhaps wish it had a little more erotic emphasis such as you would see with a European film of the same era. I believe sexuality is an important component in horror, contrasting life with death as it does. I also did not fully understand the ending of the movie, it ended a little unexpectedly and possibly a little anti-climacticly. But, given the overall excellence of the movie itself that was only a marginal detraction.
The director, whose name I now forget, gives a little introduction about the making of the film and his failure way back when to get the movie successfully marketed. He tells about how he actually heard about his film in underground internet chatrooms 25+ years later where bootlegged copies were being exchanged or discussed. He had all but forgotten about his little movie. This man's modesty, his sense of humour, and his total lack of affectation had me wanting to buy him a very good bottle of cognac. He may not take his little movie too seriously, but I see it as a serious artistic accomplishment (I'll call it "poetic horror") and it is in the top five of my voluminous horror collection along with Suspiria, The Haunting (the 1964 original), The Legend of Hell House, and Burnt Offerings.
Words cannot convey just how bizarre this movie is..........2004-10-26
The premise- A demon falls in love with a maiden and takes on human form in order to make love to her. She dies, and the saddened demon cries tears of blood upon their bed. The bed absorbs this blood and becomes a living predator...an antique canopy bed which consumes anyone unfortunate enough to rest upon it. A strange concept for a horror film, but the way it's presented is far, far stranger... This no-budget oddity was made with a very peculiar artistic finesse...not so much pretentious as self-consciously esoteric, it combines the sleaze of 70s trash cinema with several oddball ingredients of dreamlike surrealism(it's largely narrated by a spirit held captive in a painting on a wall opposite the killer bed). These elements really don't work perfectly together, but that is certainly not to say that "Death Bed" is a BAD film...it is merely very bizarre and obvious of it's restrictive budget. I personally think it's one of the most original and inventive amateur horror films I have ever seen. Opinions about this one will be all over the board, but there's no denying that "Death Bed- The Bed That Eats" is unique. I recommend it to all fans of the outre. Four stars.
Gives new meaning to the term "midnight snack".......2004-09-18
Death Bed - The Bed That Eats - it sounds like something a second-grader would write, doesn't it? Obviously, this is not your typical horror film. The title alone compelled me to watch the film, and what I discovered is a sort of mystery. There's nothing mysterious about the film, really; the mystery comes in the reactions other people have had to this long-lost film of the 1970s. Some treat the film as some macabre work of art, expound upon supposedly enlightening fairy tale elements of the story and presentation, play up the erotic nature of the theme, and comment on the macabre humor underlying such a rich presentation. Folks, I won't lie to you - I didn't see any of that stuff in this film. It's a bed, and it eats people - that's about all there is, except for the increasingly weird story of the bed's creation and ultimate destruction.
We find this huge, ornate, hungry bed inside an old stone grotto somewhere on an abandoned estate. No one comes here anymore - apparently a slew of missing persons in that locale scared everyone away long ago, so the bed sleeps (and snores and makes other disturbing man-like sounds). Then an amorous couple shows up, only to find out that they were looking for love in all the wrong places. That's Breakfast. Lunch and Dinner come in the form of a trio of young women who have decided to drive out to the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. One of the girls disturbs, even scares, the bed, and this leads us into a discussion of the bed's origins. Of course, the bed can't speak for itself; fortunately, decades ago it trapped the spirit of an artist who painted the bed while he was lying in it dying of consumption. Let me tell you, this bed got around in its younger days, even serving at one time as the central element in an outdoor "sexual rejuvenator" scheme.
I won't tell you how the bed actually eats its victims, nor will I explain the really weird story of its origins - I don't want to take away what little fun you might have with this weird little film. There is a little blood and gore involved, but none of it is very graphic in nature. In my opinion, this really isn't a very good film. Some viewers may talk about some sort of Death Bed epiphany, but I didn't take much of anything away from this cinematic experience.
The story of the film is an unusual one, though. A college student named George Barry made this film in the early 1970s on 16mm color film; he finally finished it in 1977, but he was not able to generate any interest in distributing it. Without Barry's knowledge, however, a pirated version of the film found its way into the market in the late 1980s; he only learned about this - accidentally - in 2002. Now the film has been released properly, giving credit where credit is due, as a Lost Horror Film of the Seventies. This is all well and good, but in my opinion Death Bed just isn't a very good horror movie.
Customer Reviews:
I Heard About This Flick at a Patton Oswalt show.......2007-01-31
Patton Oswalt did a killer rountine about this flick at a Comedians of Comedy show that I caught last year and I had to see this flick. Some friends of mine gathered at my place and we had a blast ripping this flick apart. If you love to give bad movies the Mystery Science Theater treatment, then this flick is for you.
Death Bed - The Bed that Eats.......2005-09-04
This Movie was A huge letdown, It was boring, & as cheesy as they come, I don't want to waste to much time on this review, Look elsewhere for entertainment, Trust ME!
Jack Pot!.......2004-12-19
I never bought a single VHS tape over the years. But with the advent of DVD I find myself spending unreasonable sums of money on DVD's. These things beg to be collected, and it is the horror genre where I seem to be spending most of my efforts and cash. Most of the time I buy DVDs where I've previously seen the movie, but perhaps a third of the time I'm buying based on the favorable reviews given on Amazon, particularly where key words, phrases or concepts are mentioned by the reviewer which I find appealing.
The key words, phrases, concepts for "Death Bed" are: psychedelic, astmospheric, bizarre, sensuous, comfortable, surreal, dreamlike, artistic....and obscure. This is the type of movie I search out. I can't believe there isn't more buzz about this film as I've shared it with a few friends and they've responded with similar enthusiasm. This is just a hidden gem. It is not insanely scary, but it has a elegant weirdness to it that I think many people will find satisfying.
The story line has already been explained: hidden little cottage out in nowhere, with a big, beautiful bed in it which invites intruders to either nap on or get naked in. The bed then consumes them. At first I thought the "eating" scenes were cheesey, but then the movie showed some scenes inside the bed as it "digested" its prey, and these scenes are very well done and surreal.
The major artisitic fluorish of the movie is that it is narrated by the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley who is held captive inside the wall behind one of his paintings next to the bed. He reveals to you the history of the house, the bed, and many of the historic victims over the past century. The elegance with which this is presented can not be overstated, especially for a film which did not have a big budget. The bed gives Beardsley gifts of the deceased's jewelry, but Beardsley still yearns to be free. The actor who speaks Beardsley's voice was BRILLIANT, his pacing, accent, inflections are hypnotic and perfect.
There is another strange series of scenes displaying a woman inside an underground coffin on the estate of the cottage and nearby mansion. I can't recall her exact role, but the scenes of her emerging back to consciousness are very effective and scary.
I hesitate to criticize this movie at all because it was so satisfying. I think it is an American film, and I perhaps wish it had a little more erotic emphasis such as you would see with a European film of the same era. I believe sexuality is an important component in horror, contrasting life with death as it does. I also did not fully understand the ending of the movie, it ended a little unexpectedly and possibly a little anti-climacticly. But, given the overall excellence of the movie itself that was only a marginal detraction.
The director, whose name I now forget, gives a little introduction about the making of the film and his failure way back when to get the movie successfully marketed. He tells about how he actually heard about his film in underground internet chatrooms 25+ years later where bootlegged copies were being exchanged or discussed. He had all but forgotten about his little movie. This man's modesty, his sense of humour, and his total lack of affectation had me wanting to buy him a very good bottle of cognac. He may not take his little movie too seriously, but I see it as a serious artistic accomplishment (I'll call it "poetic horror") and it is in the top five of my voluminous horror collection along with Suspiria, The Haunting (the 1964 original), The Legend of Hell House, and Burnt Offerings.
Words cannot convey just how bizarre this movie is..........2004-10-26
The premise- A demon falls in love with a maiden and takes on human form in order to make love to her. She dies, and the saddened demon cries tears of blood upon their bed. The bed absorbs this blood and becomes a living predator...an antique canopy bed which consumes anyone unfortunate enough to rest upon it. A strange concept for a horror film, but the way it's presented is far, far stranger... This no-budget oddity was made with a very peculiar artistic finesse...not so much pretentious as self-consciously esoteric, it combines the sleaze of 70s trash cinema with several oddball ingredients of dreamlike surrealism(it's largely narrated by a spirit held captive in a painting on a wall opposite the killer bed). These elements really don't work perfectly together, but that is certainly not to say that "Death Bed" is a BAD film...it is merely very bizarre and obvious of it's restrictive budget. I personally think it's one of the most original and inventive amateur horror films I have ever seen. Opinions about this one will be all over the board, but there's no denying that "Death Bed- The Bed That Eats" is unique. I recommend it to all fans of the outre. Four stars.
Gives new meaning to the term "midnight snack".......2004-09-18
Death Bed - The Bed That Eats - it sounds like something a second-grader would write, doesn't it? Obviously, this is not your typical horror film. The title alone compelled me to watch the film, and what I discovered is a sort of mystery. There's nothing mysterious about the film, really; the mystery comes in the reactions other people have had to this long-lost film of the 1970s. Some treat the film as some macabre work of art, expound upon supposedly enlightening fairy tale elements of the story and presentation, play up the erotic nature of the theme, and comment on the macabre humor underlying such a rich presentation. Folks, I won't lie to you - I didn't see any of that stuff in this film. It's a bed, and it eats people - that's about all there is, except for the increasingly weird story of the bed's creation and ultimate destruction.
We find this huge, ornate, hungry bed inside an old stone grotto somewhere on an abandoned estate. No one comes here anymore - apparently a slew of missing persons in that locale scared everyone away long ago, so the bed sleeps (and snores and makes other disturbing man-like sounds). Then an amorous couple shows up, only to find out that they were looking for love in all the wrong places. That's Breakfast. Lunch and Dinner come in the form of a trio of young women who have decided to drive out to the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. One of the girls disturbs, even scares, the bed, and this leads us into a discussion of the bed's origins. Of course, the bed can't speak for itself; fortunately, decades ago it trapped the spirit of an artist who painted the bed while he was lying in it dying of consumption. Let me tell you, this bed got around in its younger days, even serving at one time as the central element in an outdoor "sexual rejuvenator" scheme.
I won't tell you how the bed actually eats its victims, nor will I explain the really weird story of its origins - I don't want to take away what little fun you might have with this weird little film. There is a little blood and gore involved, but none of it is very graphic in nature. In my opinion, this really isn't a very good film. Some viewers may talk about some sort of Death Bed epiphany, but I didn't take much of anything away from this cinematic experience.
The story of the film is an unusual one, though. A college student named George Barry made this film in the early 1970s on 16mm color film; he finally finished it in 1977, but he was not able to generate any interest in distributing it. Without Barry's knowledge, however, a pirated version of the film found its way into the market in the late 1980s; he only learned about this - accidentally - in 2002. Now the film has been released properly, giving credit where credit is due, as a Lost Horror Film of the Seventies. This is all well and good, but in my opinion Death Bed just isn't a very good horror movie.
DVD:
- Deathdream
- Demoniac / Exorcism /Exorcisme (L'Éventreur de Notre-Dame) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Spain ]
- Devil's Harvest
- Die Monster Die/Dunwich Horror
- Director's Series, Vol. 2 - The Work of Director Chris Cunningham
- Don't Go in the House
- Eat the Rich: The Cannibal Murders
- Extra Weird Sampler
- Fascination
- Ghetto Freaks/Way Out
DVD
DVD
General
| Horror
| Genres
| DVD
| Video
