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Liz (Valerie Alexander) just can't get over the death of her father,
which has her mom Emily (Monica Williams) - who looks way too young to be
her mom - worried, and she does everything to cheer her little girl up -
like inviting Liz's best friends (Blue, Illa, Kendra Ware, Clinton
Philbert) over to her house for a surprise party for her 21st birthday.
However, even while the party's still kicking into gear, weird things
start to happen in Liz's house. Then Liz's grandpa gets hold of her and
tells her a weird story about an African Princess who could stay forever
young if she killed a kid of hers at least every 21 years on the day of
the kid's 21st birthday. Thing is, this is not just a legend, this African
princess is Emily, and gramps is not Liz's grandfather but her brother
(whom Emily somehow failed to kill). And it is of course true that quite a
number of Liz's ancestors have died on their 21st birthday ... but
then, the story sounds just too fantastic. Partying sounds like a better
solution, after all, it's a party mom herself threw for her. Mom of course
is also the woman who murders gramps once Liz is gone partying. Soon,
the murders start, as Emily kills off Liz's friends one by one or lures
them into death traps, and when Liz finally notices she is in grave
danger, she locks herself in with grandpa, to not only find him dead but
coming back to life as a homicidal zombie. Liz somehow manages to ward him
off, to then see the dead image of her father in a mirror, and the image
tells her to fetch an ancient scroll that is hidden in the basement and
read it aloud backwards. Problem is, all of Liz's friends will return as
zombies to try to kill her at Emily's bidding ... After having had to
face all of her friends one by one, and defeat them more by sheer luck
than anything else, Liz finds the scroll, reads it aloud ... and her
undead friends show up to attack not her but mom and tear her apart ... Shot
in black-and-white with an all-black cast, House of the Damned is a
(very) low budget horror movie that might not exactly sound original,
plotwise - but as a whole, the film has a fresh spark to it that makes it
easy to like it: It's never too serious in approach (without becoming
moronic), features special effects that are lost somewhere between
simplistic and avant garde but are loveable all the same, and there is a
certain drive-in vibe to this film as a whole that by and large has been
lost with genre movies made past 1980 or so. In all, not a masterpiece,
but incredibly likeable all the same!
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