Idiosyncratic even for a cult film that languished in obscurity for more than two decades, this baroque tale of terror works best as an absurdist comedy -- a curiosity worth seeing just for the puzzlement it invokes. If it was meant to be funny, then it's one of the most deadpan satires in cinematic history. If not, well, who cares? It's a head-scratchingly ridiculous good time. From the coquettish narration (by Patrick Spence-Thomas) to the zombie-like acting of its default protagonists (Rosa Luxemburg and William Russ), everything is off just enough to suggest that the picture was conceived, if not filmed, during a controlled-substance free-for-all. Then there's the bed itself: a gigantic set-piece that seems to expand until it rules the entire picture. There's no suspense here, really, just languid set-ups in-between scenes of unsuspecting sleepers sinking into the luxurious mire of the mattress and into the viscous, urine-like digestive fluids that seems to exist outside of time and space -- a primordial muck. Characters disappear out of the frame and then bob back into it as skeletons, provoking guffaws at the inventiveness of the low-budget production design. Just when it seems that the film can't get any stranger, we're treated to an extended sequence in which one lucky character escapes the bed's pillowy embrace only to have his hands turn into bones that slowly disintegrate as he watches, transfixed as if by a lava lamp. The fiery, poorly filmed finale provides the only sour note, for pyrotechnics are an anti-climax to everything that's gone before. Otherwise, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is a major classic in the what-were-they-thinking school of horror.