The Demons of Ludlow (1983)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
The town of Ludlow is celebrating their bicentennial but things don't go as planned. The town has restored a piano that has been in the town since the beginning but they don't realize that it's actually haunted and soon the vengeful spirit of a pirate is killing people in the town.
THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW comes from director Bill Rebane who is best remembered for his notorious THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION. This film here isn't a very good one but at the same time I must say that on a technical level it might be the best I've seen from the director. It's certainly not as entertaining as his BLOOD HARVEST but there are some decent things here for fans of the genre.
I think the film has a couple effective moments including the ending when the ghosts actually appear and start to come out for their fun. Another effective scene has a woman in bed when she comes under attack by one of the ghosts and her daughter. The film needed a lot more scenes like this one as it really could have been a classic. There's also some minor gore that you'd expect from a horror film of this period. Also, if you've seen Ulli Lommel's THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR you'll notice many of the same actors and setting.
However, the biggest problem with this picture is that it's deadly dull at times. The majority of the running time has a couple people doing an investigation so we've got a lot of scenes where they're just sitting around talking and I must admit that it was nearly impossible to stay awake during them. The story just isn't original or interesting enough to put up with all these dialogue scenes and it really drags the film out. It has elements of THE FOG and even a bit of THE SHINING but it just doesn't have the story to carry it.
* 1/2 (out of 4)
The town of Ludlow is celebrating their bicentennial but things don't go as planned. The town has restored a piano that has been in the town since the beginning but they don't realize that it's actually haunted and soon the vengeful spirit of a pirate is killing people in the town.
THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW comes from director Bill Rebane who is best remembered for his notorious THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION. This film here isn't a very good one but at the same time I must say that on a technical level it might be the best I've seen from the director. It's certainly not as entertaining as his BLOOD HARVEST but there are some decent things here for fans of the genre.
I think the film has a couple effective moments including the ending when the ghosts actually appear and start to come out for their fun. Another effective scene has a woman in bed when she comes under attack by one of the ghosts and her daughter. The film needed a lot more scenes like this one as it really could have been a classic. There's also some minor gore that you'd expect from a horror film of this period. Also, if you've seen Ulli Lommel's THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR you'll notice many of the same actors and setting.
However, the biggest problem with this picture is that it's deadly dull at times. The majority of the running time has a couple people doing an investigation so we've got a lot of scenes where they're just sitting around talking and I must admit that it was nearly impossible to stay awake during them. The story just isn't original or interesting enough to put up with all these dialogue scenes and it really drags the film out. It has elements of THE FOG and even a bit of THE SHINING but it just doesn't have the story to carry it.