The Unwatchable Movie Challenge: Reel 3

Welcome back to the Unwatchable Movie Challenge after 3 months of emptiness. The move from Kansas to California really took a beating on me. (As well as my car…) But we came back in the third round with a real contender. A movie so bad they didn’t release it for 26 years!

Movie: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
Tagline: Lost Horror Film of the Seventies.
Director: George Barry
Starring: Demene Hall, William Russ, Julie Ritter, Linda Bond, Patrick Spence-Thomas.
Filmed: 1977
Released: 2003 
This film has no rating.
Runtime: 77 min
Genre: Horror
Writer: George Barry

Length of Movie I Watched:
There was a group of about 5 of us that sat through this whole thing.

Verdict: There was a reason this thing took over 20 years to get released. As far as I’m concerned this thing probably should have stayed buried.

Death Bed: The Bed that Eats. Really? Where does that idea get fun? The writer/director George Barry supposedly came up with this in a dream, and tried to make the movie resemble that. The pacing is really off because of the attempt to make this surreal. But believe me, the pacing is by far not the worst aspect of this film. This movie is jumbled, poorly thought out and the exposition to how and why the bed eats is lackadaisical. So if you can muscle through the structure of the film and really get down to the core, a demonic bed that dissolves people in a frothy brew between the sheets, then you just run into more problems. The acting is obviously going to be sub-par, you wouldn’t want someone coming in and showing up the bed with “Acting Skills.” The filmography is rough and the lighting is poor. Sound design is half-assed and doesn’t always make sense. There really isn’t anything good to say about this movie.

The funny thing about this is the fact it took Mr. Barry 5 years to finish filming this. FIVE FREAKING YEARS! He started in 1972 and didn’t get it finished until 1977. He shopped it around for awhile but surprisingly no one wanted to distribute a crappy film about a bed that eats. Weird, huh? He finally gave up in the 80’s, and then right before the DVD release in 2003 his daughter started getting the word out again. He actually had forgotten he made the movie for some time. If the movie is so bad that it’s creator who wasted years of his life on this project could manage to force the idea out of his head, it might not be a good movie. What I wanna know is if the shooting schedule was really lazy or if he kept going back to redo scenes and improve the movie? I mean the idea that this release may be the 3rd or 4th revision and THAT was the very best he could do, that’s scary. That is scarier than anything actually in the film.

Patton Oswalt, who is a comedic genius, has a rather long bit on Death Bed from one of his albums. That’s where Kyle and I first heard about this film. In fact, they probably owe a lot of DVD sales to Patton’s stand up act.

There you have it. Reel 3 of the Unwatchable Movie Challenge. Kyle’s second pick was much worse than Teeth, but those mutilated penises will forever haunt me. Now it’s time for me to choose another movie. I’m going to try and aim away from the Horror genre, although Netflix did just release Dead Snow on Instant Watch. However I might try and dig deep for some really bad obscure comedy from the 80s or something.

I will leave you all with clips from Death Bed. Watch at your own risk.

--“The Erik” Sanburn

The Unwatchable Movie Challenge: Reel 2

Movie: Teenape Goes to Camp
Tagline: No more teachers, no more books …only Teenape’s dirty looks!
Director: Chris Seaver
Starring: Meredith Host, Casey Bowker, Jesse Ames, A.J. Stabone, Josh Suire
Released: 2008 
This film has no rating.
Runtime: 61 min
Genre: Comedy | Horror
Writer: Chris Seaver

Length of Movie I Watched:
I sat through every terrible minute of it.

Verdict: As bad as this poster makes this move look, it is worse. If you have an ounce of decency in your soul, spare yourself and anyone else the pain of having to watch this.

 

Here’s the trailer. Watch at your own risk.

So Reel 2 finally happened. This time around I was the one issuing the challenge. I started to miss “Teeth” a little bit while watching this. At least in Reel 1 the production values were existent, but with a company name like “Low Budget Productions” I shouldn’t have expected anything great. This movie definitely tested our ability to watch a bad movie and really amped up the challenge from Reel 1. I think as far as the “Unwatchable Movie Challenge” goes, if you think to yourself, “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked this movie after all” throughout the film, it was a good challenge.

This movie opens for no reason with a Pirates of the Caribbean parody. It then changes to follow the 80’s raunchy comedies path for the majority of the movie and eventually switches again to slasher and action parodies.
The acting is subpar, no, that doesn’t describe it well enough. When I was in high school I produced a half hour television pilot with some friends. We all were decent high-school actors, but we cast additional people who had no idea what acting was. Instead of coaching and directing the less experienced up to match our levels, everybody just seemed to suck worse. I loved to watch that show after we made it, coming back to it now, I despise it. It is absolutely atrocious. THIS MOVIE IS WORSE THAN THAT! It honestly just seems like a bunch of friends wanted to make something silly, they did, and somehow they are distributing this film and several more all over the place. I picked this up off of Netflix. While browsing their website I discovered that they have received a nod from Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman. www.dorkswithoutfaces.com/lowbudgetpictures/index.html 

The writing is forced, they want to offend you in the style that South Park or Family Guy has offensive humor just to offend everyone. It doesn’t come off as offensive or funny. Perhaps I am biased, because I am a comedy writer and don’t really enjoy that kind of style of forcing dirty words into lines because of the “Ha Ha, you said poopy!” type of humor. But going back as far as the original “Scary Movie” and the ridiculous amounts of crap that monster has spawned I have hated them. I think humor should be more layered than poop jokes. And just because they have several layers of poop, doesn’t make it a layered joke.

Obviously, Teenape will have his followers, he will have people that think his gorilla mask that barely covers his face is part of the “feel” of the film. I have no problem with low budget raunchy comedies. I love Troma. I love camp, and that’s not the log cabins in the woods kind of camp, I mean campy humor. Over the top, obviously fake gore also has no problems in my book. But there is a way to do it right. There are cheap ways to make your title character not sound like he is talking inside a mask for an hour. There are cheap ways to cast your production with competent actors. And the cheapest thing of all is writing decent material to work with. I like low budget indie films. I think they can find a place and now and then even contend with the big budget Hollywood blockbusters. “Teenape goes to Camp” fails on all levels as a film. I have not seen any of their other productions, but I hope that they are much better. For the sake of all humanity.

I don’t even want to think where Reel 3 is going to take us…

Until next time, may god have mercy on your soul,
-- “The Erik” Sanburn

P.S. Coming next week I will be releasing the 5-part short story chronicling my recent adventures in life. I know a lot of you aren’t up with the full story, but all will be revealed soon.

The Unwatchable Movie Challenge: Reel 1

A New Challenger Appears!

Movie: Teeth
Tagline: Every Rose Has Its Thorns
Director: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Starring:Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Hale Appleman
Released: 2007
Rated R for disturbing sequences involving sexuality and violence, language and some drug use
Runtime: 94 min
Genre: Comedy | Horror
Writer: Mitchell Lichtenstein

 Length of Movie I Watched:
Every last bit of it.

Verdict: Watchable, not enjoyable, but watchable.

 

Kyle issued this challenge earlier this week. He’s been waiting for a good opportunity to force this onto somebody. It was a killer first round to the Unwatchable movie challenge. I am not exactly excited to see penises (penisi?) in a movie, but to see graphic depictions of penis mutilation is something I hope to avoid in the future.

This movie’s concept was outlandish to begin with. Vagina dentata. (Only Google that if you aren’t eating or at work.) I was pleased to see the Comedy tag on IMDB, i went into this thinking it was a serious horror film. As for scares, there are none. Not really any thrills either, apart from how thrilling the credits seem after 90 minutes of this. Female nudity is very minimal with only one quick scene of toplessness, but as for male frontal nudity, there is plenty. Well maybe 5 or 6 scenes with penises. The pacing in the first act seems very slow as well, coupled with the fact this isn’t a “scary” movie it might not be one to watch while trying to stay awake.

This was a bad movie. I do not want to watch this again, I do not want to watch it with a hen. I do not want to watch it in the night, I will wish it away with all my might.

I can’t even imagine what the next movie will be…

Until next time,
-- “The Erik” Sanburn