The Demons of Ludlow

The town of Ludlow marks its bicentennial with a barn dance, the highlight of which is the unveiling of an antique piano, a gift bequeathed by Ephram Ludlow, the town's founding father. Unfortunately for the townsfolk (all 47 of them), the instrument turns out to be a modern day Trojan horse, for when the keys are played, Ephram's spirit is unleashed from within, free to wreak revenge on the descendants of those who persecuted him centuries before.

Slow moving, badly acted, with dingy cinematography and an unappealing lead actor, there's very little to get excited about with this uninspired supernatural shocker from director Bill Rebane. A few unintentional laughs can be had at the expense of the poorly handled ghost/demon scenes, there's one pair of bare breasts (albeit on a supposed minor), and a couple of moments of unconvincing gore (including a crap but fun decapitation), but for the most part this is a real test of endurance, one that I had to view over the course of several evenings because I kept falling asleep.

This is a movie about a dying community with a curse on it. Back in Colonial times some guy who played the piano got his hands chopped off. Because of that, his supernatural being is going to make all town members pay for it. His old piano (harpsichord) is sent to the town on their bicentennial celebration. The people who play it go into hysterical contortions like those folks in reefer madness. Also, bad things begin to happen. Spirits are set free. They are dressed in cheap Thanksgiving costumes. But they are deadly. Also, lots of people like to show up in their underwear before being accosted by these Pilgrim bullies. There's a few pirates around too. There is some gore in it but the rules are never precisely clear and we need to figure them out as we go. There is a bouncing piano. Not exactly Citizen Kane.

I think The Demons of Ludlow may very well be director Bill Rebane's masterpiece. Anyone familiar with Bill's output will be well aware that this is a very relative statement, seeing as this is the man partially responsible for Monster a-Go Go and fully responsible for The Cold. Yep, Rebane well and truly operates in the Z-Grade sphere of the film industry. So all things considered, I was pleasantly surprised with The Demons of Ludlow. Not that it is by any means a good film – it's shoddy – but it has some moments that actually could be described as being effective. And overall it does sort of have a strange charm of sorts.

The story is about a cursed piano that harbours an evil entity that unleashes all manner of nasty events onto the inhabitants of a tiny town called Ludlow. It seems that this is all tied in with nefarious events that occurred hundreds of years ago, and its all part of a deadly revenge…

Like you should expect, production values are basic as hell. But the film does have a sense of place at least; the snowy remote community is fairly believable, while it also manages to incorporate some period costumes and even utilizes some raw but not entirely awful special-effects – so the movie does at least have some ambition. Of course it would be wrong not to acknowledge that The Demons of Ludlow has a fair few flaws too. It's quite haphazardly put together and is verging on being senseless a lot of the time, while the low budget does show in more or less every frame. Pacing, too, isn't always its strong point but it does at least provide a lot of varied events to keep us entertained, many of which seem to involve acts of violence. The best singular scene has to be when the disturbed young girl happens upon the demons at the table in the dining room. This sequence was even verging on actually being quite scary. Although it would be remiss to not add that many of the horror set-pieces are in actual fact pretty hilarious – the little girl ghost lobbing rocks at the old woman's coupon being a very good example.

All-in-all though, this has to be considered a success, seeing as it's a Bill Rebane film. Not for everyone to be fair, but if you don't mind dipping your toes into Z-Grade waters then you might have quite a good time with this.

Although the first one/third is a little slow, 'The Demons of Ludlow' winds up being a surprisingly decent little B horror flick.

The premise is very good, with a 200-year-old New England town in which the history has mysteriously disappeared and those who know about it refuse to talk. A pair of apparent siblings, supposedly on some sort of journalistic assignment are in town, checking into its history, when a historic piano, belonging to the town's founder, is returned to the town by the founders' ancestors. As soon as the apparently generous gift is received, locals begin dying grizzly deaths.

There are a few plot holes and one gets a bit tired of the preacher's alcoholic wife constantly calling, "Chris, is that YOU?" The DVD I have (part of a collection of 50 B thrillers) is a bit dark and in a few cases it is hard to tell one female from another – not to mention one figure running through the snow in the distance from another. Plus, about the second and third/eighths of the film seems to bog down a little, and the colonial ghosts somehow all resemble pirates. Still, it manages to capture a creepy mood that works pretty well. For a 26-year-old low-budget film, it has some pretty good special effects and the unknown cast does decent enough work. Overall, it's one of the better ones I've found so far on this super collection of B and C horror flicks. If you like B horror, this is well worth watching.

Nonsense about an old, haunted piano being brought to the small town of Ludlow, population: 47, and it causes all sorts of murder and mayhem there. The plot is obviously rather thin.

A surprising, although slightly silly, killing in a barn is a highlight. Snowy photography is well done, film has the look and feel of a small town in the middle of winter, to great effect, but interior photography is unmemorable; the special effects are variable: sink catches fire (already done in Boogeyman, three years earlier) and a girl is attacked by a roll of toilet paper? Did I see that correctly? An overlong, dumbass sequence with a girl trimming her doll's hair and being attacked by people in white wigs and dressed like it's the 1700s was seemingly trying to be so-bad-it's-good, but ended up just trying this viewer's patience.

The first half hour was pretty good, and there is a bit of atmosphere throughout, but it's a downhill after that first third.