Danny Draven

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) Once upon a time, in the wild carefree days of 2018, I was very amused to find out that there was one horror film, Bed of the Dead, that focused upon a killer… bed. Now, in this accursed year of 2020, I am far less amused to find out that in between Bed of the Dead, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Deathbed, there are three movies with similar premises. I haven’t yet seen The Bed that Eats, but this Deathbed is a contender for the title of the worst film of the trio. Made for TV (usually, but not always a bad sign for a horror film), this is a low-budget, low-imagination effort in which a young couple moving into a haunted apartment discover a locked room that opens up just for them, revealing a bed that, we already know, has been the scene for a gruesome kinky murder a few decades earlier. Considering its pedigree, Deathbed’s gore is slight, the nudity is tasteful and the plot is strictly by the numbers, although the finale does amp up the sex, the gore and the plot twists—not enough to compensate, but enough to be slightly out-of-touch with the rest of the film. Tanya Dempsey looks nice as the heroine, but that’s about it wherever acting talent is concerned. Danny Draven’s direction is barely adequate and sabotaged by its muddy cinematography but the rest of the film is simply not very good no matter what. While not out-and-out terrible, this Deathbed isn’t much either. I suppose that the only left to do now is to watch The Bed that Eats.