The Bed opens with Jamie, a young man, looking round an old, deserted country house. Through flashback we see Jamie as a boy, scared out of his wits when his older sister and her boyfriend, left alone in the house to babysit Jamie for the evening, play cruel tricks on him. His sister makes believe she’s been sucked under Jamie's bed by a monster and her boyfriend pretends he’s been stabbed. Jamie has his revenge at the end when the couple, laughing at scaring Jamie half to death and frolicking on The Bed, are suffocated by its sheets and consumed by it. We come back to present day; Jamie looks at the empty room where the bed once stood then is called by someone outside: an ambulance driver beckons him down in a friendly voice. We assume it’s Jamie's day out from the mental asylum. The final shot is of the lighter part of flooring where the bed once stood disappearing once Jamie has left the room.

Movie director Niccolò has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.

When David Lynch was making his film Blue Velvet, German filmmaker Peter Braatz was also on set, shooting documentary footage with a Super 8 film camera. Now, on Blue Velvet's 30th anniversary, Braatz presents his footage, along with still photographs, as a "meditation" on Lynch's work.