NURSE WITH WOUND - CYCLOBE:
PARAPARAPARALLELOGRAMMATICA (ANGRY EELECTRIC FINGER 2)

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EYEBALL COMPENDIUM: Sex & Horror, Art & Exploitation

BEYOND TERROR: the films of Lucio Fulci, by Stephen Thrower

"Violence is Italian art!" - Lucio Fulci

The story behind the strangest DVD release of the year - Steve Thrower

I first saw Death Bed: The Bed That Eats in 1988: a friend had discovered
it whilst browsing at a cheap video sale and decided to spring the film
on me. I was smitten by its weird aura right there and then, and mystified
too. Who on Earth made it? What was the director playing at? How did such
a movie get made? Death Bed, with its cheesy cover and 'you're kidding me'
title, was devoid of any credits, save for the words "(c) George Barry
1977." The mystery of its origins was intensified as the film gathered
momentum, from creepy comedy to poetic folk-tale to surreal horror: its
mood ricocheted between registers in a way that defied categorisation, either
as mind-warped outsider art, insane student project, or exploitation film
gone awry. There was a streak of comedy, but the film wasn't just a cheap
laugh: instead there was a loose, wayward dreaminess which gave the film
an impact all its own. I remember thinking 'I must find out who made this!'
But no-one knew anything about Death Bed: the video label had disappeared,
the name 'George Barry' was anonymous enough to belong to thousands of
Americans. And so the trail went cold...

In 2002 I began work on a book about maverick American directors and my
desire to find out more about Death Bed was re-ignited. Through the auspices
of film researcher Marc Morris and a British web-site, Lightsfade, I finally
had the chance to talk to George Barry and hear the full Death Bed story...
George Barry was born in 1949 and raised in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb
of Detroit where he still lives today. He began making films whilst studying
at University, and in 1972 - after working on a few b/w 16mm shorts - he
decided to go for broke with a colour 16mm feature film to be blown up for
theatrical release. Using $10,000 of his own money he began filming Death
Bed, a project that would eventually span five years and cost around $30,000.
Barry decided to weave a story around a dream he'd had - about an engulfing,
possibly carnivorous bed...

With cameraman Robert Fresco, he headed for the Gar Wood Mansion outside
Detroit, commencing the shoot in late Spring 1972. The core of the movie
was then filmed over three weeks in the spring and summer. Assembled during
1976 by experienced Detroit TV editor Ron Medico, Death Bed's 16mm answer
print was finally struck in '77.

Unfortunately, Barry's problems were only just beginning. Over the next
few years he travelled to L.A. and New York several times, making the rounds
of the small distributors. But with slasher films on the rise, Death Bed
was always going to be a hard sell. Those who did show interest were put
off by the blow-up costs, or were offering virtually no return.

The next convolution in the Death Bed saga would lead to the film at last
reaching a few devoted fans: although it all came as a great surprise to
Barry himself. In the early 1980s he'd sent the answer print, which was
still without credits at the time, to a small LA company interested in obtaining
video rights. He was offered $1000 for a finished video master. But Barry
was chronically short of cash and unable to shoot the missing credits. Time
passed, and the answer print was eventually returned.

What he didn't know was that the 'interested party' had unscrupulously pirated
a copy before sending it back. It was this version, devoid of credits, that
snuck out onto tape in Great Britain in the late-1980s, on the supremely
obscure 'Portland' label.

Obscure the film may have been, but if you saw it you didn't forget it.
Those who noticed were tuned not to the noisy gore frequencies of the nasties
but to a stranger, more elusive bandwidth. After all, Death Bed isn't much
of a 'gorehound' movie - viewers are required to spin their mental wireless
to the space between stations, where the shipping forecasts, foreign signals
and dream-voices live...

In 2002, Daniel Craddock of the British website Lightsfade published an
on-line review of the film, which at last alerted its director to the existence
of the pirated version. After interviewing George at length for my book
Nightmare USA I put him in touch with Cult Epics, reknowned for daring releases
including films like Viva La Muerte! and Tras el Cristal/In A Glass Cage
- hence the DVD of Death Bed you can buy today.

George Barry told me: "Death Bed came from a dream and, to begin with,
I wrote the story as more a fairy tale than a horror film. We shot the story
as possibly more horror film than fairy tale, then in the editing process
Death Bed tried to return to its fairy tale origins."

A good movie leaves something elusive behind, a lingering impression that
drifts through the mind like Haven Gillespie's "haunting refrain":
a special something that seems to dance out of reach when you look directly.
There are skilled directors whose work, for all its craft, will never possess
this quality, which is a dream quality and far from common. And there are
films built on such uncommon lines that they're steeped in this strange
pleasure even when their conventional limitations are readily obvious. It's
in this way that a cheaply produced film, made at the very fringes of the
industry, can stay with you after a major production has hurried faceless
out of your memory.

The lines crossed by Death Bed are an index of its quality. Set in the twilight
between categories - between comedy and horror, art and artless, mundane
and insane - it draws on energies lost to more sensible films. "People
not only forget their dreams, they often forget about their dreams. They
forget about the process of dreaming.", says Barry. How great it is
then to see this DVD release, a dream thought lost and forgotten, now magically
recalled in miraculous detail. Here's to the unique and lingering spell
of Death Bed!

Stephen Thrower (this is a condensed extract from my forthcoming book Nightmare, USA, in preparation from FAB Press).