
One of the first things I thought about while watching Death Bed: The Bed That Eats was Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. The photograph is pretty simple – as simple as the title of this here film. There’s a crucifix floating around in piss, it’s yellow color perhaps indicating the photographer’s need to hydrate. But the reason that image spring into my mind – and it’s not from reading this, although a startling coincidence – was the coloration of whatever liquid lives inside the bed and is capacious of melting/devouring just about anything.
It’s that dark, yellow color, which no doubt exists elsewhere in nature. In my mind, though, it’s only in the bed and in that photograph. And the toilet.
Anyway, Death Bed has nothing to do with laying around and waiting to die. Instead, the film is predicated on a demon becoming trapped in a bed that was dragged outside for a couple to enjoy some naked fun under the open sky. The pair clearly didn’t have any idea what was to transpire, but they probably didn’t put too much stock into demons either.
As odd as the premise is, the narrator, a guy stuck in the headboard (kinda), moves between explaining the film’s action to viewers and having a go at the bed. As would be expected, though, the bed devours whatever it can despite the occasional ribbing.
Viewers first find some picnicking couple forcing their way into a house where the bed’s now located, spreading out a sumptuous feast, getting distracted by the possibility of coitus in some abandoned house and are sucked down into the mattress. Visions of the yellow liquid ensue.
The rest of the film is basically comprised of variations on the theme. Some folks stumble upon the house, find the bed and are eventually dispatched to the piss world and melted away. What’s kind of interesting is that the accepted notion of black folks getting killed first and swiftly in these films isn’t played out. The lone black lady in the picture actually lasts a pretty long time and even almost escapes. Not quite, though.
Detailing the end of Death Bed isn’t all that important. There’s some attempt at recovering a lost, runaway sister. But that can’t be the point to the film, mostly because there isn’t one. Death Bed isn’t the kind of offering meant for pontificating about. It’s just a kitschy movie with a plot that almost no one else would have come up with.
