Monday, December 1, 2014

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

Director: George Barry

Writer: George Barry

Composers: Ossian Brown, Mike McCoy, Stephen Thrower

Starring: Demene Hall, William Russ, Julie Ritter, Linda Bond, Patrick Spence-Thomas, Rosa Luxemburg, Dave Marsh, Ed Oldani, Dessa Stone, Marshall Tate, samir Eid, Fred Abdenour, Jock Brandis, Demene E. Hall

More info: IMDb

Plot: A bed possessed by a demon spirit consumes its users alive.



My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Oddly enough, yeah.

This picture has an interesting history.  Writer/director George Barry made this in 1973 and unsuccessfully shopped it around for distribution for years.  It gained a cult status from countless bootleg VHS tapes and it finally received an official DVD in 2004.  It's the only film Barry's ever made and that's a shame because it's pretty fun.  Yeah, it's campy but it's also got a great gimmick in the titular character.  There's some interesting and fun special effects for the bed devouring its victims.  The plot is pretty simple.  The spirit of a man lives in a painting on the wall.  He's our narrator who also talks to the bed.  He talks about how he designed the bed before he died and how it came to be. That's not even told at the beginning.  You have to watch it all to get the full story but that's the gist of it.  In between all of that is a series of people throughout the decades that come to the mansion and who subsequently get eaten.


There's nudity, gore and humor.  It's not a comedy, per se, but it's got elements of fun and the film makers are fully aware that this is for fun and not even they are taking it too seriously.  The effects, as I said earlier, are very good and I thought the story and everything wasn't all that bad.  I'm not going to take off the future menu just yet because I think I just might like it more the second time...after a few years.  You can watch the whole thing on YouTube above. 

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