Deathbed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

This is a gem, in the worst sense possible. If you were to get together with a group of friends, got very drunk, and wanted to watch something absolutely horrible that would make you all laugh, this might be on the list.

The premise of the movie is that a bed in an abandoned mansion is possessed by a demon spirit, and eats whatever or whoever it comes in contact with. The mansion is abandoned because the bed ate everyone in the house, and potentially everyone in the local area. Before you get your hopes up for hilarity, the bed cannot move on its own. It doesn't talk either. The only way that we the audience are able to understand what's going on with the bed it through the voice on the narrator, one of the bed's victims who did not completely die and is not trapped behind a drawing he made of the bed. The story takes off when three women come up to the house from the country to 'get away', and they come across this abandoned house, which is of course the logical place to spend the night. Slowly, the bed claims them one by one, but there is a problem with one of the girls, who, as the narrator tells us, remind the bed of its creation. Yes really. Eventually, the ghostly narrator tells the girl from behind the drawing, to create some ritual that will hopefully destroy the bed. Will anyone survive its evil comfort!?

This movie was so bad. First of all, the narrator has this very morose, almost bored British voice that clearly exists only to give the bed's 'thoughts' a voice. Throughout the movie, the narrator has a one-sided conversation with no one about what the bed is thinking, feeling, and doing. It crosses the line of ridiculous. The actors are all very bad. They don't get into character at all and are stiff and awkward, just saying lines rather than actually acting them.

The very worst of all is the bed though. It makes these awkward crunching and slurping noise when it's eating, or swallowing noises when it drinks. The way it eats people is to slowly have them sink down into the sheets, which apparently open up into some void, represented by this yellow foam. We then get to see whatever it's eaten in this liquidy, yellow limbo where they disintegrate in what we can only assume is a bed's equivalent to stomach acid. At the beginning of the movie (one of the worst parts) a young couple comes into the mansion to... have some fun, and the brought a picnic. While they're kissing, the bed sneakily takes their food and eats it... but then returns the left overs to the top of the bed. So an apple sinks into the bed, an apple core comes back up. A bucket of chicken sinks down, the bucket comes back up with chicken bones. But the bed seems to not be consistent, because it later eats things that are not even food and doesn't seem to mind.

I would not really recommend that you watch this alone. Not because it's a horror movie... but because if you don't have someone to laugh with, you will probably get bored about half way through. If that far.

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is a woman from Paradise Island, an island that has been forgotten by the rest of the world, and by time itself. Wonder Woman and the women on Paradise Island are supposedly amazons from ancient Greece. They have super human strength and speed, the speed is used in an activity called bullets and bracelets where one person shoots a gun and the other uses their special bracelets to knock the bullets away. How a race that has been isolated for thousands of years not only knows what a gun is, but got a hold of one and developed a weird defense against it is beyond me. Wonder Woman is the daughter of the queen of the amazons, next in line to be exact.

The story begins with a German plot and American retaliatory actions during WW2. An officer, Steve Trevor, from the US army's plane goes down over the ocean, right by Paradise Island, and he washes up on its shore. Wonder Woman takes it upon herself to return him to his homeland (as there can be no men on Paradise Island) and returns him in her invisible jet (also.. how an ancient civilization managed this I'll never know). When she's there she eventually learns of the Nazis and decides that she had better stay where she is and help defeat the Nazis. She creates an alter ego for herself named Diana Prince, and works as the secretary of the man she saved earlier.

From that point on Wonder Woman find out about Nazi schemes through the war department office or when she's out with Steve, and then Wonder Woman will miraculously appear when there's trouble. As for the role gender plays in her superiority, Wonder Woman has a huge naiveté. She doesn't know anything about the present day and this often humbles her or gets her into compromising situations. From a not-so-accepting-of-female-independence perspective, it was ok that she was physically superior to men because she was really ignorant and still needed male guidance. This kind of thing came up several times in the show and was kind of annoying. For a princess she wasn't exactly regal. On the other hand, she was pretty pro-feminism for the time.

The pilot was very long and almost boring, with several parts dragging on and on, but the actual show is very watchable. It's not my favourite superhero tv show, but it's pretty good.

Love Boat

This is a really good show from the '7o's/ '80's about the romances that take place on a cruise ship. Each episode features three storylines about three different couples and the troubles they're having in their romantic lives.

The couples are usually passengers on the ship so we never really have a continuous storyline, but we do have a steady crew that we meet each episode and slowly get to know better as the show progresses. When watching this for the first time I was surprised to find how relevant it was. It may have been my prejudice of the time, but I wasn't so sure that what I was sure was to be cheesy romance plots from the '70's would be able to stand the test of time. However, most of the stories are still plausible... even though we may use different language today to describe it.

What I love about this show is the guaranteed happy ending in a short amount of time. Actually, you get three for the price of one. Usually if you want that happy ending feeling you have to wait an hour and a half and you probably have to go through a couple of unhappy scenes to get there. With this show however, there isn't enough time for a lengthy unhappy scene, especially with two other stories to share the space. There's just enough time for one problem to arise and be solved. And you get three happy endings every time!