Deathbed: The Bed that Eats: A Cheesy, Low Budget Masterpiece

It's not hard to figure out why a film called Deathbed: The Bed That Eats sat unwatched on a shelf in director George Barry's home for almost 30 years after its completion in 1977. The film's title alone is laughable. As Barry himself put it, "no studio wanted to touch it."

To this day, there still isn't a studio that wants to touch the film. Yet, somehow Barry rallied a small group of fans through the Internet to finance the film's long-belated release on DVD. Hardcore horror fans are rejoicing, and it's no surprise why.

For those who can't figure out the premises of the film just by hearing the title, "Deathbed: The Bed That Eats" is a low budget horror film about a bed… that eats people. The bed, located in a hidden cellar, cannot move, nor can it use magic to lure victims.

The titular bed can only gobble up the poor souls foolish enough to mosey into the cellar and sit on it. Preposterous as the film's title and narrative may be, it manages to include several key elements to satisfy the niche audience it was intended for.

Barry is a member of the same school of horror as John Carpenter ("The Thing," "Halloween") and Peter Jackson ("Dead Alive," "Bad Taste," "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy). These directors are pioneers of the revisionist period of horror, which started in the late 1970s and ended with the '80s.

True to his contemporaries, Barry uses innovation to create special effects on a shoestring budget. Flesh is torn from the arms of victim Rusty (William Russ, better known as Alan Matthews from the ABC sitcom "Boy Meets World"), and eyeballs roll across the bed through the magic of plaster and stop motion animation.

It's the cheesy kind of fun that can't be replicated by the CGI used in recent horror films.

The film also lacks a key element of contemporary horror films that irks many a true horror fan: big named actors and actresses stuck into the film to simply act as eye candy. In fact, the only actor of note in the film is the less than handsome Russ.

"Deathbed" features some insanely comical moments. Some are intended (such as the bed drinking a bottle of Pepto-Bismol from a young victim's purse), but most are not (the first victim is a bucket of fried chicken). Truly this film is worthy of a screening on the comedy series "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

The best horror films are often placed within a social context, and although "Deathbed" is far from being ranked among the elite of its genre, it does its best to present some sort of deeper meaning.

The film's nameless narrator, a limey bloke played by Dave Marsh and voiced by Patrick Spence-Thomas (don't feel bad, no one else has heard of them either), is an artist who fell victim to the bed during a "period of consumption."

Now, trapped behind a painting, the narrator must watch helplessly as travelers meet their demise under the covers. The film's commentary on the way society watches helplessly as atrocities are committed against the innocent is a bit hard to derive, but it's in there.

The one thing no one can deny about Barry's one-and-only film is its attempt to maintain artistic integrity. Most of the bed's meals have some sort of surrealist dream (the work of Salvador Dali comes to mind) in which their mortality is cryptically revealed to them.

Also, the bed doesn't simply devour its victims, but often times uses creative means to demonstrate some form of poetic justice. One victim, a vain girl named Suzan (Julie Ritter), has her head loped off when the bed uses her elegant necklace as a saw.

"Deathbed: The Bed That Eats" isn't without its share of flaws. The script leaves several loose ends dangling (what is the bed's origin?), the premise is downright silly and the DVD contains no special features. Still, "Deathbed: The Bed That Eats" is an over the top ride that will please any B-movie cinephile.

Rating: 4/5