The Demons of Ludlow

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.

On its 200th birthday a town is given a piano as a gift. Unfotunately its haunted by the spirit of sorcerer killed by some of the town's founders.

You've seen it all before and better. Actually you've also seen it shorter on any number of old TV anthology shows. And to be honest the script is not all that bad (even if it is full of plot holes and contradictions). The problem with this film is that anytime the ghosts of the past show up to torment and kill someone this film goes from just okay thriller to jaw droppingly awful. You will not believe how bad the scenes with the ghost are. They are so badly filmed, costumed and played out as to resemble nothing so much as the worst grammar school production of a Thanksgiving pageant that you can imagine. Its really bad.

This is a movie to avoid since its not good in a bad sort of way, its just bad.

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.

I just got done watching this movie and as it was barely watchable I did get a few laughs out of it. The storyline is very similar of Carpenters "The Fog" except these ghosts come out of a white piano to exact their revenge on the town of Ludlow and there was very little fog. Most of the movie is a big yawn but several death scenes were hilarious. For instance, the first scene a half naked girl gets her intestines ripped out but it is just kind of a flash to her stomach and it looks really fake. There was a really funny scene where two girls throw rocks at this old lady and hit her square in the face. And there was a great decapitation scene that had me on the floor. Over all, this was a bad movie but it did have its moments (even if they weren't meant to be funny). I give this movie a 4/10.

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.