Tomb

What could be more inviting than a big, comfy bed? There’s one waiting for you at home right now. Just think — you could put down the paper or log off-line, take the day off, go home and collapse in a heap on the most comfortable piece of furniture you own. Ah, that would be the life.

Of course, not every bed guarantees a blissful night’s sleep. Check out these various movie beds, some of which might actually be worse than a bed of nails.

- The Great Muppet Caper (1981). The Muppets take lodgings in the spectacularly seedy “Happiness Hotel” and share a room with a spring-loaded “Murphy Bed” — one of those pull-down beds that folds up into a wall when not in use. The treacherous thing has a nasty habit of snapping shut without warning, trapping its inhabitants in the wall. Oof!

- The Godfather (1972). Actually, the bed of studio head Jack Woltz (John Marley) looks nice and luxurious. It’s just the severed horse’s head under the sheets that ruins things.

- The Wrong Trousers (1993). Daffy inventor and cheese-fancier Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) has rigged his bed to tilt his head up, sending him sliding down a chute into a pair of trousers just before he plunks down at the breakfast table. It seems like a pretty rough way to start the day, but Wallace is sufficiently proud of his invention to overlook the occasional bruised tailbone. Wallace’s loyal dog, Gromit, on the other hand, is justifiably wary of Wallace’s contraptions. The look of fear in his doggy face just before the bed drops him down a chute is priceless.

The gimmicked bed has since become a permanent feature of all subsequent Wallace and Gromit cartoons. And hey, despite its bad track record and dubious construction, the thing looks like a lot of fun.

- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Remember Johnny Depp’s death scene? Clawed hands burst up through the mattress, as a dozing Depp gets dragged into the bed’s interior. Silence… then a volcano of blood. Eek!

- Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977). How could any list of nasty beds leave out this legendary oddity? A comfy-looking four-post bed is possessed by an evil spirit. People have sex on the bed, and the bed eats them. We get to see the acid-filled interior of the bed, with fizzing corpses dissolving in a surreal ocean of yellow liquid. One guy tries to save one of the bed’s victims and winds up looking at his skeletonized hands with a slightly annoyed expression on his face. (He actually says, “Oh great. Now the cartilage is decaying.”) You’ve never seen anything like it.

-Four Rooms (1995). There are many possible reasons for a hotel bed to smell bad. A hidden corpse under the mattress has got to be one of the worst.

-Roujin Z (1991). This darkly funny dystopian anime movie centres on a high-tech bed designed to care for the elderly. The Z-001 is the latest advancement in nursing-home technology, a bed that can feed, clean, medicate and restrain its elderly occupant. In a scene reminiscent of Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), the Z-001 is demonstrated to a roomful of impressed shareholders. The bed does its thing while the miserable dying man inside is treated to every possible indignity. Gloppy nutrients are forced down his throat. A tube clamps on to his crotch in order to vacuum up his waste products. Robotic arms seize the old guy’s wrists and make him “exercise.”

The shareholders are suitably impressed with the machine, and look forward to a future in which geriatric care workers can be done away with, leaving our nation’s elderly to spend their twilight years without any human contact whatsoever.

That’s just the beginning. The bed then becomes self-aware and escapes from the nursing home, still housing a helpless senior citizen. As it travels, the bed begins to make adjustments to its own structure, adding components from other machines it finds. When the military comes in to stop the rampaging bed, the Z-001 easily defeats several tanks and jets, assimilating their parts as it trundles on its merry way.