BroadcastChic
Excellent, a Must See
ChanFamous
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Teddie Blake
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Jemima
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
preppy-3
It's about a small Massachusetts town called Ludlow (population 41). It seems ages ago an evil warlock terrorized the town. He was executed and (somehow) his evil spirit was put in a white piano that was sent away. It comes back ages later and the evil warlock sends out demons to kill the descendants of the people who murdered him. The plot is kind of vague but so is the movie.A no-budget mess. The plot is OK and has a somewhat eerie atmosphere but atrocious acting (Paul von Hauson is beyond belief) and dime store special effects destroy this one. The gore scenes are plentiful but simply laughable. They're so obviously faked you can't take them seriously. It's kind of sad because there is some good acting (Stephanie Cushna was excellent) and it was short (only 84 minutes). The direction isn't too bad either. Still this can safely be skipped. Unrated but it would definitely get an R for all the gore.
gialloguy-45531
My grandma gave me a VHS copy of this for Christmas, when I was little. Back then, I had no appreciation for atmosphere, and the low budget effects and lack of famous names made for a lot of laughs. 20-something years later, I decided to give it another go, and have come to like "The Demons of Ludlow". It's still on the cheesy side, but it's spooky. The synth soundtrack is surprisingly effective, and there are some genuinely dark and unsettling scenes. The sequence about the insane girl and her dolls (and what happens to her) stuck with me all these years. And one little demon looks like she just got in from Mario Bava's "Kill Baby, Kill". I recommend it for those who like a slower pace and have a soft spot for early 80s horror.
mlevans
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.
Coventry
Damned, talk about bad luck! The brief plot description on the DVD-cover sounded remotely interesting and I actually put my hopes up to see some delightfully cheesy 80's gore. Then you discover that the film is directed by Bill Rebane and suddenly all your expectations vanish! No offense Bill, but you're a ham director and it looks like you deliberately ruin all the scripts that end up in your hands. "The Demons of Ludlow" shamelessly rips off John Carpenter's "The Fog", with the plot about a snowy little town that celebrates its two hundredth anniversary. But the history pages of Ludlow are written in innocent blood and vengeful spirits return to present day to kill the descendants of the town's founding fathers. See, pretty much identical to Carpenter's classic. I don't have a problem with imitations (loads of great horror films borrow ideas from others), but the elaboration here is really weak and pathetic. For example: the titular demons live inside an antique piano (?), they can perfectly fire off shotguns, they take over the plastic bodies of a little girl's dolls and, when they eventually killed everybody they hated, they do a little bit of ballroom dancing!?! Most sequences are just incredibly boring, with tedious dialogs and atrocious acting performances, and the supposedly horrific moments only evoke feelings of pity. Ever seen a bleeding piano float in the air while cheesy laughter can be heard? Didn't think so... Personally, I couldn't wait to see all the characters die painful deaths and I was secretly hoping that the possessed piano would eventually crash-land on director Rebane. Insufferable 80's crap, avoid at all costs.