Mining History for Horror

While Colorado mourned the 2014 centennial of the Ludlow Massacre with earnest theatrical reenactments, filmmaker Kirk Loudon was busy cooking up his own morbid take on the event: Diggerz: Black Lung Rises.

The movie reinvents the Ludlow Massacre, the day the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company attacked more than a thousand striking miners and their families and killed 19.

The movie’s antagonist, Black Lung, is a wicked spirit, symbolizing 13 murdered miners. Every fifty years, he returns for vengeance and kills 13 townspeople.

Loudon, a third-time filmmaker, plans to shoot his upcoming gore-fest in Trinidad, Colorado, where he has owned a home for the past five years and has immersed himself in local lore.

“We’re going to rewrite a little bit of Ludlow history,” said Loudon.

Loudon’s last film, Dawn of the Crescent Moon, was a thriller that relied on suspense and mystery to scare the audience. This time, he wants to lure kids with a boatload of blood and guts.

Loudon is casting the film this weekend and plans to shoot over the next year.

For more: Ludlow: One hundred years of silence