The Demons of Ludlow (1983)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: William Arthur and Alan Ross

Cast: Paul Bentzen as Chris the Preacher; Debra Dulman as Sybil; Stephenie Cushna as Debra; Mary Walden as Elenore; Carol Perry as Ann; Patricia J. Statz as Emily

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The Demons of Ludlow was Bill Rebane making a supernatural film in the midst of the eighties. The film's existence, from Bill Rebane's own words¹, is as much because he had acquired an old piano in an auction, and wished to use it rather than leave it lugged around his studio unused. I respect anyone wanting to improvise a film just from this, as stranger examples do indeed exist, as those who can attest Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) actually existing can say, a film where Paul Walker has his brain implanted into a cybernetic T-Rex robot, in a romantic comedy with Denise Richards and gore in the uncut version, which exists someone offered director Stewart Raffill to use their animatronic T-Rex. Rebane's film is more sober, and a traditionally macabre film even if one made in the midst of what would have been the slasher boom after the first Friday the 13th movie in 1980.

Set in the small town of Ludlow, a tiny community who population is dwindling, with older people and few younger ones, their two hundredth bicentennial celebration, since the town's founding, is presented with an centuries old piano return from England belonging to the town founder. "Returned" is the right word, as Debra (Stephenie Cushna), a news reporter who grew up in the town and has returned, is aware of stories that this harmonium piano came from Ludlow, and the locals are not admitting this. It is very obvious the town's foundation is cursed, the piano a literal harbinger of revenge as, literally with demonic figures or ghosts of the town's locals brought up upon its arrive, it is devouring the young and, as Debra will learn, is the revenge of its town founder, banished and in gristly circumstances which makes his centuries old anger potent.

Rebane is a man out of time to this decade of the eighties, someone of a slower pace to his films, not remotely making a film of the slasher period even if this bring some gore with it. That said, this suits his films entirely, and as I have been adapting to his style, I am becoming fond of this, as well as being aware that, alongside how extensive dialogue is in his films, this is his idiosyncrasies that make his cinematic character. More hauntings transpire as people are now in danger - the local priest aware something is wrong; the major who wants to hide their past; the dissatisfied priest's wife; or Emily, the mentally disabled adult woman living with her older mother and her dolls that are among those targeted by the ghosts. These visitations are embraced by Rebane in terms of the aesthetic, like red bouncing balls (à la The Changeling (1980)), characters in period costume materialising through doors and mirrors (with extensive use of the fog machine), and clearly an extensive budget for invisible wire for objects to float onscreen.

These productions show their context, where Rebane's family tree is among many working on the credits, and the snow covered Wisconsin territory adding a nice atmosphere for a cheesy but engaging spooky tale. Bill Rebane's work is an acquired taste, as his genre films are beholden to their dialogue, and The Demons of Ludlow is his most conventional film from those I have seen, which is not a bad thing. My appreciation of these films, however, as I have been going through Bill Rebane's filmography has grown significantly as I have also seen how his film making developed over the years in a chronology. Certainly for this genre, this is rewarding to see, and Bill Rebane did make a slasher film, one called Blood Harvest (1987) starring Tiny Tim of all people, so he was happy to move along with the genres he passed in idiosyncratic ways.

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1) From one of the Straight Shooter segments, a multi-part interview with director Bill Rebane about each film included for Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection for Arrow Video.

The Alpha Incident (1978)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: Ingrid Neumayer

Cast: Ralph Meeker as Charlie; Stafford Morgan as Dr. Sorensen; John F. Goff as Jack Tiller; Carol Irene Newell as Jenny; George 'Buck' Flower as Hank; Paul Bentzen as Dr. Farrell; John Alderman as Dr. Rogers

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

No, we do not want any tanks, are you nuts?

Scientists experiment with an alien microorganism originating from Mars – not a good sign – using hamsters and rats as test subjects. It is a strange entity which managed to get to Earth, requiring additional experimentation including sending a shipment of the organism to Colorado by train. Things naturally go wrong as George ‘Buck’ Flower, a veteran character actor, plays Hank, staff on board the train who, suspicious of the new person with him alongside a mysterious shipment carrying a gun, takes a look for himself in one of the crates. Expecting something more of interest, like money going to be burnt, curiosity will kill the cat as Hank sadly infects himself after opening a crate, and spreads the material among the few people at Moose Point, the place the train stops out. Everyone there, including the scientist Dr. Sorensen (Stafford Morgan) who was on board the train, has to be quarantined at the station and considering that the organism, when you fall asleep, causes one’s brains to expand and implode, this is very bad.

In mind to Bill Rebane’s previous work – Monster A-Go Go (1965) is infamously bad for many, but is also an unfinished production Herschell Gordon Lewis acquired and tried to make sense of, and Invasion from the Inner Earth (1974) suffered from its absolute lack of progression as a dialogue heavy work – Rebane learnt from the two previous films and made a theatrical film here which is much more technically and narrative focused¹. The pace is improved, and whilst still as a dialogue heavy chamber piece, it progresses alongside cutting to side characters (usually scientists and the government) to build the narrative and tension with our central group. Even when the film slows down, it makes sense here, when there is an escalation and those stuck in the quarantine cannot even go to sleep or they will die, bad enough that the US military have to send them amphetamines to keep a person awake. The chamber piece with dialogue works here because the drama is interesting, including the characters.

The film was sold on actor Ralph Meeker as one of the cast, the Kiss Me Deadly (1955) star playing the elder station master Charlie, but the cast altogether and their characters are what become more interesting. The scientist Sorensen is facing the quarantine with as much the realization he is as much a victim, an anti-authoritarian streak as the ending is downbeat, and there is also Jenny (Carol Irene Newell), stuck as the only woman among these tense man. She is interested in Sorensen, but it is Jack (John F. Goff), the womanizer who has his eyes on her alongside the fact, skipping forward a few decades to a pandemic or two, is confrontational with Sorensen when told they have to quarantine. Credit has to be given to Bill Rebane’s cousins, as he had admitted he had envisioned a buxom Jayne Mansfield-like figure in the role, only to be convinced away from “sexual excitement” to a downtown normal girl figure², Jenny becoming a really interesting and ultimately tragic figure in how her narrative closes out defeated and scared.

Time, such as the 2019 COVD-19 outbreak, really does mark The Alpha Incident. Barring its source virus being an alien one, and there being one imploding head depicted for the gore crowd, this could be a mutated strain of a virus or a bacterium. Jack not following rules, to the point of being shot in the leg trying to leave, to prevent spreading the infection writes itself in the issue of a person feeling trapped and complete disregard for the safety of others in hubris. Even if this had been more overtly science fiction, it is the paranoia of being stuck in one place with the boredom part of the concern, even if the virus subtext had not been there and any force kept people trapped in the station, part of the issue (and the inherent interest) when writing these types of films in genre cinema. Here it is that one is stuck in a locked place and that, even if something unexpected is found like a secret stash of Playboy magazines, that can lead to worse existential concerns, especially worse for Jenny as the one woman among heterosexual men whose consciousness of their desires (and hers) alongside her fears of the likely demise become her story arch. The fact they cannot sleep does evoke how scary that concept would be; as much as Wes Craven exploited this fear for the Nightmare on Elm Street films, even a fan of the films like me admits they really were not about this for any of them, the sole exception dealing with the consequences biologically of not sleeping, the 2010 Elm Street remake, being a case where that was fascinating, but within a dull film which few would want to write about.

Rebane himself viewed The Alpha Incident as his first “real” film², and he should be proud of this. It was a challenge to see if he could tell a story of people confined in a small place, as has been documented as the reason the film exists², and after the stumbles before, I think he succeeded.

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1) There is also The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) beforehand, famously the giant spider film building the critter around a car to bring it to life, but that would be worth revisiting to see how that film went.

2) Arrow Video’s Straight Shooter extra interview for the 2021 Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection.

Monster A-Go Go (1965)

 

Director: Bill Rebane (with Herschell Gordon Lewis)

Screenplay: Bill Rebane, Jeff Smith and Dok Stanford

Cast: Philip Morton as Col. Steve Connors; June Travis as Ruth Logan; George Perry as Dr. Brent; Lois Brooks as Nora Kramer; Rork Stevens as Tom Logan; Peter M. Thompson as Dr. Chris Manning; Robert Simons as Henry Schwartz; Barry Hopkins as Frank Logan; Henry Hite as Frank Douglas / the Monster; Herschell Gordon Lewis as the Radio Announcer Voice; Bill Rebane a  theBoyfriend at Dance / the Narrator

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Candidate

 

What you are about to see may not even be possible, within the narrow limits of human understanding.

 

A surf guitar song set over the still shot of the cosmos is probably befitting Monster A-Go Go. Christened one of the worst films ever made, including a stint on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, its infamy in genre cinema is well known. The story of why this film ends up as peculiar as it can be is simple, yet asks so much of how precarious filmmaking actually is on any level. Bill Rebane, a figure who would go on in Wisconsin making genre films, shot the film in sections as he kept running out of money¹. The film was eventually unfinished, and it was Herschell Gordon Lewis, the man who I admire but was always a businessman as much as a favour for splatter flicks, who bought the unfinished material wishing to have a secondary film to play with one of his own. Lewis finished the original with all the issues, such as not being able to hire the original actors, which could come about as a result of this.

A fallen space spaceship and the astronaut named Frank meant to be within it are found crashed in a field. The astronaut is nowhere to be seen, but there is a dead helicopter pilot, which immediately raises concerns. Also be aware, as a viewer, the voice over narrator, to pad over of the loose ends, such as a still conversation to the wife of the astronaut, is going to be the MVP here whether you wish to bequeath the title to him or not. Played by original director Bill Rebane himself, that deserves applause because never was there pontification in a sci-fi narration with such heady tones, Criswell only beating him as no one could match Criswell in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

As someone more sympathetic to these films, punching down on Monster A-Go-Go was not something I did throughout viewing this film. Someone else would punch down on little Jimmy, nephew of the astronaut Frank, who is the kind of kid put in front to act who hesitates on camera, who also looks like a stereotype of a fifties Americana young boy, who asks whether Jimmy was as common a name in North America as it inexplicitly has always felt like for myself. Others would punch down on long scenes of actors talking in fields. Far more an issue, whilst a compelling oddity, is that this film is incredibly dry and languid, with the monster normally not seen and just talked of. It can cut to go-go dancing in the most abrupt of inclusions, but unintentionally this is like if James Benning or an avant-garde artist decided to make a parody of a sixties sci-fi b-flick and deliberately wished to antagonise the conventional viewer of such films.

The use of the narrator to explain content, and the minimalist score alone, feels like we have accidentally made an avant-garde film at times, especially as for a low budget film mocked as terrible, when seen in a restored form, this is a monochrome independent production that, honestly, looks a higher budget than many modern no-budget films shot on digital. That is entirely because celluloid and even 16 millimetre film has a distinct touch to it, a layer of aesthetic which is striking, especially as for a Chicago shot film, this has moments which are atmospheric even if most of it is still scenes of a lot of exposition. When the monster is actually revealed, it is then you realise these experiments in obfuscation are really just a film that needed to be patched together, with the stranger caveat that the monster is not an alien, or a rug acquired because the original costume was lost, nor an Incredible Melting Man designed by Rick Baker, but Henry Hite, who is a distinct looking man, which cannot be denied, but you feel sympathy for in how awkwardly he is used. Born Henry Marion Mullens, Hite was promoted as "the world's tallest man" at 8 ft 2 in, even if his actual height was 7 ft 6¾ in², part of a Vaudeville act called the “Lowe, Hite and Stanley” show³. Monster A-Go Go was his only film, most of his career for various food promotions like Wilson Certified Meats³. Hite here, sadly, does not have a lot of time onscreen, unable to emphasis his height over everyone else and thus, usually in a shot separate, instead looking like a balding man in a mucky silver jump suit and burn makeup. With the added aspect that it is a film with almost all the monster attacks worked around off-screen, even if using his height for monstrousness can be argued to be distasteful, he is a distinct figure to include in any film which is not appreciated enough by the film itself.

It truly does feel like a minimalist take on a sci-fi monster film, including all the aspects not intended, as with a Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) which would cause the likes of Mystery Science Theatre to urinate on it. It is, even for a film over just an hour, a film so languid that my younger self, not used to these extremes, would have despised it. Now, adapting to these types of films, there is something delightfully perverse in a lengthy scene of a man, wandering a film holding a burnt stick, set to clearly audible sound of the film reel in the preserved Arrow Film restoration, and bird calls. Lengthy scenes of exposition, around a narrative where the monster is abruptly kept at one point by a scientist only to escape again, have a theatre-like pace with sets, even a tangent that leads to no build up or anyone being quickly killed. It involves a trucking "Lancelot" helping a woman with a broken down car, with a kiss as a reward. Those characters do not return, no monster appears, and whilst I liked it, other viewers would be dumbfounded. This is not even taking in the casting of June Travis, in a tradition of hiring older actors based on their history, Travis an actress from the Hollywood studio system who whose career was mostly in thirties films with Monster A-Go Go her last. Her role, barring a possible romance with one of the men trying to find Frank, despite already being with Frank, is barely here as well and just adds to the strange jumble of pieces that made the film.

Bill Rebane, the director of the likes of The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), is someone I want to get into. He would not make another film for nine years after this¹, staying in short and industrial filmmaking until Invasion from Inner Earth (1974). Truthfully, Invasion from Inner Earth managed to be even more languid, a far more difficult film to sit through if still fascinating. Monster A-Go Go is undeniably a potential struggle for anyone getting into these films, but it is such a bizarre end result of when films are left unfinished and are attempted to be finished years later that I appreciated. It is as much a film meaningful for me as a huge Herschell Gordon Lewis fan, someone who would have openly admitted, as a businessman first, he made films with little and on the seat of his pants. By himself, he could make a film as strange as Something Weird (1967), which lived up to that title and even founded the company of the same name, by the late Mike Vraney and now held by his widow Lisa Petrucci, who would release Monster A-Go Go on unsuspecting viewers in a new age. This film is no different in the slightest to the fifties sci-fi from Hollywood, all as capable of being as rewarding as they are kitschy, all with a fixation on the dangers of radiation be it nuke or from space flight, with the only difference is that this is the anti-sci-fi film in structure. It also has as big an anti-climax transpiring as I have ever seen in these films, which was a surprise to see, in hindsight hilarious if the kind that would cement this film's infamy fully.  For those prepared for a film like Monster A-Go Go, the stomach for it, it is fascinating to witness as this anti-climatic, anti-genre mishap, especially with the delight that, thankfully, Bill Rebane kept making films and a cult name for himself from the seventies onwards, and Herschell Gordon Lewis made a lot of films at this time in a variety of genres, and became a cult legend with this a weird footnote for him.

Abstract Spectrum: Minimalist/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) This is discussed by Rebane himself on part one of the Straight Shooter interviews, included with Arrow Video's Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection

2) Taken from "Tall Man Henry Hite Dead At 63", published in The Evening Independent on May 29th 1978.

3) Taken from Strange But True: When the 'World's Tallest Man' came to Clinton, written by Terrance Ingano for Telegran & Gazette, included on the site for July 11th 2021.

Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: Barbara J. Rebane

Cast: Paul Bentzen as Stan; Debbi Pick as Sarah; Nick Holt as Jake; Karl Wallace as Eric; Robert Arkens as Andy; Arnold Didrickson as Sam

Ephemeral Waves

 

People running in the streets, red smoke in the Wisconsin woodland, and pie plate UFOs belie what Invasion from Inner Earth actually is. About an alien illness decimating the Earth's population, and likely alien involvement too, the UFOs themselves are never explained or become directly involved. Instead, quite soon into the film, we enter the snowy woodlands into a conversation about growing up and getting married between an adult brother and sister living in isolation.

In-between a main theme re-appropriated for Lady Street Fighter (1981) and weird seventies trippy effects being seen occasionally, what the film actually is involves referencing film and genre film critic Kim Newman's observation, from Arrow Video's blu ray set Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection. In his appreciation of Bill Rebane, even Newman expressed reluctance with Invasion from Inner Earth as a "difficult" film to watch, where he suggests in comparison what happens when community theatre interconnected with these types of independent genre films made for drive-ins in this period. Invasion from the Inner Earth is a drama first, a lot of talking about the end of the world, where travelling inland, the brother and his male friends by a small plane are blissfully unaware of what has transpired with the world and an alien plague, beginning their own journey and the death of those close even when they travel back to isolation at home.

Beyond this, with the exception of an ominous glowing red light, their story including his sister is a lot of conversation which is not connected to a progression of events or fleshing the characters out. Barring a stint with a small personal airplane, most of the production is told in rooms with dialogue talking about the apocalyptic tale. As a result, and unlike a BBC Quatermass production from the fifties, which worked around budgetary limitations and had Nigel Kneale as a screenwriter of considerable talent, this is a sluggish film to watch, the comparison apt if against this theatrical film's disfavour. It is about its subject in how it is talked of, not of showing it, and yet the dialogue is closer to a film here you would get gratuitous UFO sightings even if the pie tins on string, rather than occasionally. It feels a chamber piece that is felt severely of its length, and it is damning to say that even next to the feature film Bill Rebane made before, the infamous Monster A-Go Go (1965) that Herschell Gordon Lewis put the unfinished footage together of, that film hailed as one of the worst ever made was far more easier to watch.

This has its quirks, mood boosters that show reward for truly patient. A strange gag about Channel 9's Post Terminus, because even in the post-apocalypse, where UFOs and alien diseases exist, local TV shows with a host in a Butlin's red jacket still exist, where testimonies on being picked up by aliens are recounted before the show gets frazzled off the air. There is a freak-out psychedelic moment where a plane explodes, and we see a radio DJ losing his mind in his recording booth, believing he is the last living person and speaking out into the perceived void on air. Also, the ending is weird, about the last two actual people, a man and a woman, being reborn as kids, which is not a spoiler as it really does not make sense at all in context.

Most of the film however will be unbearable for people. I see what the point is, a group in the isolated snow covered woods of Wisconsin experiencing the loneliness and paranoia when the world ends, but it feels like the aforementioned Quatermass concept without the shine and character building of those work. It is a concept instead made into the most lethargic possible of tones and with clear improvisation, one character entirely the MVP because Bill Rebane let him, as the likable joker and potential love interest to the sister character, ab-lib silly voices. My younger self would have not gotten through this film; now, I watched this as a pleasingly lacksidasical curiosity, but one I cannot recommend with significant caution over.