And the reason why this movie wasn't reviewed first is also made famous. So famous it has a name, being "The Big Netflix Fuck-Up of 2008". But thankfully, this little forgotten movie, made famous by Patton Oswalt (who by the way added the word "people" to the title), found it's way to me and now I am here to present this to you, all four of you reading this.
Well, first off. I noticed on the DVD the option to hear an introduction by writer/director/master genius George Barry. I had to watch this so I can lay eyes on the man who thought of, then filmed, a movie about a bed that eats (people).
The intro was kinda dull. It was just George telling us that he made the movie but couldn't get it shown anywhere and it just sat on his shelf for a couple of years until the 80's rolled around then he was able to get it distributed for a cheap price on VHS (remember those? Just kidding), then...he forgot about it.
That's right, the guy who created DEATH BED, forgot he made a movie titled DEATH BED. If that was me, I'd be talking about it until I was 110 years old, through my feeding tube.
"I made Death Bed, ya know?"
"That's nice, Grandpa. Tell me about it while I pull this little plug here..."
But whatever. Anyway, flash forward to whatever year George got the Intarwebz installed and he was just going through some movie sites when he stumbled upon a site that reviewed Death Bed and he realized that people were pirating the movie. George was like "Aw hell nah, bitch!" and decided it's time to bring this baby to the DVD market.
And that's about it. He said "If you're watching this, then it's too late to turn back", which isn't true. I could've easily stopped my DVD player, threw the DVD away, and frolicked in a meadow somewhere. But seeing as it's January and I'm in fuckin' Indiana, I'd be freezing my ass off. So Death Bed it is!
The movie starts with the most exciting thing impossible! Blackness!! And we're treated to this for exactly a minute!! Then around the 30 second mark, we get to hear someone eating apples! What a lovely way to start a movie, huh?
That's right, the bed acts like a human. It snores, it laughs, it burps, it does everything. Then a shot of a groovy 70's couple walking up to this house that the Death Bed resides in. They throw open the front gate, waking the death bed.
Groovy Guy and Groovy Girl talk about how they been walking a long ass time. Sounds like someone took that Proclaimer's song a bit too seriously. Groovy Girl complains about being hungry, so Groovy Guy looks for a way inside the house. We get a thousand shots of locks being locked, which I'm not sure what that was about. Finally, a door opens and the Groovy Couple go inside.
Inside they find the bed and they jump on it. They start making out and Groovy Girl complains about being hungry again. Groovy Guy pulls out their delightful meal and lays it on the bed. What got me was, they seemed to acknowledge that this house has been unoccupied for probably a hundred years. But they have no problem with laying on a bed that's probably covered in dust and bugs and lord only knows what else. Oddly enough, the sheets do look clean. Maybe it's a self-cleaning Death Bed.
After the food is laid out, they make out some more, which gives the Death Bed time to get a little snack. The bed swallows the apples, the wine, and the chicken. We get shots of these objects floating in a yellow liquid that's probably suppose to be stomach acid or something. Then the bed vomits up the wine bottle, the apple core, and the bucket.
Groovy Girl is like "look fucker, I'm hungry!" and Groovy Guy goes to get a piece of chicken and finds only bones. Then Groovy Girl says "It's ok. I wasn't hungry."
...
WHAT?!?! The only lines of dialogue you had, besides "I'm tired", is "I'm hungry". Now you're not hungry? I'm telling you, women are bi-polar or something. Anyway, Groovy Girl, realizing food is out of the picture, is finally in the mood to fuck. So they proceed to do it and the bed curtains close and screams are heard. I was upset that I didn't see the actual "eating" but then the rest of the movie happened.
After the opening titles (which is totally gonna be my desktop wallpaper in a few weeks when I'm tired of my Eternal Sunshine one), the narrator talks about how the bed is pissed off at the house and is making it fall apart and slowly the house just simply vanishes.
Then we get a small history of the bed where the bed is super imposed over images from the 1920's. Maybe the bed is upset cause it lived through the depression. Then we get some newspapers headlines of people vanishing and the mayor getting pissed then the mayor vanishing. How the Mayor knew the bed was responsible is anyone's guess.
The narrator keeps informing us that he's trapped behind this painting, just watching the bed eat all these people and he can't do anything to stop it. It's explained later (kinda) why he can't just talk, he just sits there in this little hidey hole behind the painting and he's been there for an undetermined amount of years.
Back to the present, a car pulls up and there's clearly two people in it, a black chick and some hippie looking chick. But then all out of nowhere a third chick appears. Diane, the black chick, Sharon, the hippie chick, and Suzan (The credits spelled it with a Z. Why? I dunno), the out of nowhere chick. SUSAN (with an S dammit!) isn't feeling good and just roams around somewhere.
Then we're treated to everyone's internal thoughts, as we focus on Susan, talking about how she didn't wanna come here and the ride there sucked cause Diane and Sharon just made fun of her. The making fun of part consists of Diane telling Susan that flowers grow in the country. Man, that is rough. I got called a fat loser for roughly 6 years in school, but being told about flowers is WAY worse, let me tell you.
All three chicks make their way into the little room the Death Bed is in and they make a comment about all three of them sleeping in the same bed. OOOH YEAH!! But Susan, being a killjoy, says she's tired now and is gonna go to sleep, then she can be up all night while the other two sleep in the bed. Damn it, ruin the three-some why don't you. Diane is like "Fine" and she and Sharon leave.
Susan gets naked and the Bed starts going "ooooh". If it could, I'm sure it'd have a giant erection right now. Then Susan gets in the bed and falls asleep. The narrator tells us that the bed is giving Susan bad dreams, which consist of Susan being forced to eat flying roaches and green caterpillars. The Death Bed stuff doesn't bother me, but this fuckin' grossed me out.
During this dream, the Bed takes Susan's clothes off (yes, a bed took off someone's clothes), then slowly starts to swallow her. The thing I been most impressed with this movie is how some of the effects are done. I can't for the life of me figure out how they had the foamy stuff just suddenly appear on the bed, even have it come up through the sheets. So Susan is swallowed but then her skull suddenly appears buried in the ground outside and a bush of red roses appear. The narrator mentions how the Bed used Susan's death to present a gift to Diane and Sharon. Ok.
Sharon goes into the room looking for Susan and the bed gets upset and uneasy. The narrator notices this and is confused. The bed then swallows Susan's stylish 70's suit case then pull out a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and starts swallowing that. I swear, this is easily the best movie I ever reviewed.
While the bed fights upset stomach, nausea, heartburn, constipation, diarrhea, the narrator tells us a little bit about some of the Death Bed's long line of victims it had. And the sucky thing is, this is presented all out of order so we don't get a clear understanding on when all of this started.
The Bed ate a priest, some old lady who liked reading about lesbians, some chick with a brace on her leg, several small children (we don't see it eat the children thankfully), and then for some reason we focus on a sex therapist. Why did I say "for some reason"? The reason is clear: cause he was a sex therapist.
The odd thing is the Bed didn't eat all the people that were fucking on it. The therapist had some chick who he used to spark male patients or something. Then the therapist somehow bought the bed outside to make it more kinky or something. Still no chompin' of the slut. I'm thinking maybe the bed didn't wanna contract an STD or something. But then one day, there was an orgy going on the bed (we kinda see this, but the people are doing their stuff under covers) and the bed decides to eat a buffet.
We then find out that whatever inanimate objects the bed swallows, the narrator behind the painting gets. So he has a large collection of jewelry and shoes and other stuff. Then we FINALLY get to the creation of the Death Bed. If for some reason you're reading this review standing up, you better sit down. This is a fuckin' doozy.
There's this demon, see. It resides in some tree somewhere. Sometime in the 1800's the demon, being bored, decides to turn into wind. So it's blowing around and it finds this chick standing by a river. The demon falls in love with this chick, so he decides to build this bed and turn into a human. But since demons are demons, they have red eyes. The human demon seduced the chick and they started to fuck on the bed, but I guess his demonic wang was too much for her or something cause she died. The demon got pissed off and turned all emo and shit and cried, and his tears are blood. The blood got on the bed, the demon went back into the tree where it stayed for the remainder of this movie, and the blood soaked up into the bed, possessing it.
Needless to say, I paused this movie after this and laid down for a bit.
Oh, and we get a bit of history on our narrator. He was sick in the bed some time ago and he decided to draw (wait for it......) his "death bed" (HA!) which is the painting we've been seeing. The Death Bed eats the narrator but for some reason his soul is sent to the painting of the Death Bed, which is why he's behind the damn thing this whole time. This isn't really explained. There were a ton more stories of people who got eaten but they weren't as interesting so let's move on.
So Diane, tired of looking for Susan, decides to lay down in the bed while smoking. The narrator mentions he hasn't smoked a cigarette in awhile, which made me wonder if he secretly wanted her to die so he can get her cig's. The cigarette touches the bed and I'm thinking the bed is gonna catch on fire and the movie's gonna end, but nope. Diane has a weird dream where she's talking to Susan and she's looking at a book of foil. Then Diane wakes up and tries to get out of the Bed but it starts to swallow her legs.
Up until this point I was seriously gonna give this movie five stars. Everything was just so great, especially the part that explained how the Death Bed came to be. But then it got weird, stupid, and dare I say boring at this point.
Diane manages to pull herself up from the stomach acid of the Bed and then we get a long ass boring scene of Diane crawling from the Bed to the door. This goes on for-fucking-ever. AND it was done in one shot. I think George Barry wanted us to be impressed with this but...I wasn't. It was too long.
Sharon, who thought Susan went to the nearby town (which is never said by name), is coming back after the car died and she hears Diane scream for help. Sharon runs over and FINALLY the Bed does something. It throws one of it's curtains to Diane and drags her back. Sharon is trying to pull her out but she manages to pull off Diane's FUCKIN' finger! The narrator gets the cigarettes but is pissed to find out they're menthol.
During all of this, some dude with big hair is looking for his sister. We had no idea who was his sister but finally it's established it's Sharon. And he isn't given a name in the movie, but his real name is Rusty Russ. So let's just call him Rus.
Rus finds Sharon in the room with the bed and the bed starts doing tricks like throwing up eyes, having them roll around the bed, then swallowing them again. I dunno what was up with that. Rus is like "WTF?" and decides to stab the fucker!
Rus jams the knife into the Bed but it swallows the knife and his hands, leaving only skeletal remains. Rus isn't too freaked out by this, oddly enough, and instead asks Sharon to just pull them off of his body. She does and she throws them in the fireplace for some reason.
Then the narrator tells us that the tree demon is sleeping so he (the narrator) can finally talk to Sharon. Why the demon needs to sleep in order for the narrator to talk out loud is beyond me but whatever. The narrator tells Sharon how to destroy the bed and it's really involved.
She has to drag Rus to this field, stab the floor around the bed, which starts bleeding, then make some figures out of wood outside around Rus. Then the narrator says the only thing that can kill the Bed is the chick the demon boned to death, which is why it was afraid of Sharon earlier, cause she resembles the chick.
I thought Sharon was gonna have to pretend to be the dead chick, but no, what really happens is much stupider then that. Sharon has to kill herself, then the body of the dead chick will arise. No, I don't know why, don't even ask. So Sharon dies off camera and Dead Chick arises, but naked. Living Dead Girl then starts fucking Rus, which makes the Bed jealous or something and starts bursting into flames. The Bed burns to death, and the narrator's soul is finally free from the painting. And with that, the movie comes to an end.
Man. What a wonderful movie. It's simultaneously great and stupid. Exciting and boring. And just overall weird. I'm so glad Mr. Barry decided to put this masterpiece on DVD for all the world to see. And as I stated earlier, the effects weren't half-bad. I don't know if they really used acid to dissolve the chicken and stuff, and what that foamy stuff was and how they got it through the sheets. Frankly, I don't care. It's just fuckin' brilliant.
-Jason
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