Abby (1974)

Abby (1974)
Cast: Carol Speed, William Marshall, Austin Stoker, Juanita Moore
Director: William Girdler
Nutshell: nice choir girl wife of local reverend turns into hideous lusting she-demon!

One of the legendary classics of Blaxploitation and Horror, Abby has been forced off screens and never even made it to video or DVD shelves due to a lawsuit that was slapped onto it courtesy of Warner Brothers. The giant corporate studio took the makers of Abby to court insisting that its remarkable resemblance to their own record-breaking success The Exorcist was not just coincidence. Though Abby is undoubtedly a huge rip off the block busting Exorcist – it could hardly be construed as a threat to that film and could surely not have harmed that films immense box office appeal.

At the outset we have Father Williams (Marshall) discussing various African demon gods and spirits with his fascinated disciples. He informs the rapt students about the most potent and nasty demon of all; Eshju, who is a demon of lust. Later, Father Williams is excavating some site in Nigeria when he comes across an amulet like box apparently belonging to Eshju. Upon opening the box, the angry spirit of Eshju is released and immediately makes the representative of God, Father Williams, the target of its ire.

The scene shifts to typical middle-class suburbia where Father Williams’ son who is also a reverend, is excitedly moving into a new home along with wife Abby and various family members helping. While the family prepares for housewarming festivities, strange things start happening to Abby, the effervescent wife of the pastor.

First up, Abby’s trip to the laundry room turns into a nightmare as various objects start flying around not dissimilarly to the occurrences in Regan’s bedroom from The Exorcist. Later, Abby’s Husband Emmet finds that she is literally frigid in bed when he finds her body temperature to be icy cold. In the first of many shocking scenes Abby seemingly taken over by a weird unseen force, takes a sharp kitchen knife and plunges it into her own arm, slitting it horribly.

Then later in church, having sung her hymns in the most awful Barbra Streisand imitation, she has a violent coughing fit during the prayer recital which ends with her running out onto the streets cackling demonically, shouting obscenities at the top of her strangely masculine voice. Her eyes assume a golden glint and suddenly her make up looks all wrong – she is a nasty sight, but things get progressively worse as soon Abby turns into a vile, obscenity and vomit spewing thing from hell with a sex drive that knows no bounds. She takes to frequenting a particularly stylish social club where she starts picking up men in order to fulfil her voracious sexual appetite. Then, as violent urges reach uncontrollable levels, Abby starts to leave a gruesome trail of dead victims in her wake while transforming into a soul sister of Regan McNeal with a remarkably similar pack of devilish tricks up her sleeve.

Meanwhile Brad Grinter, the co-director of this magnificent slice of turkey was involved in directing cheap nudie flicks in the 50’s style…but sadly for him the 70’s had brought major hardcore porn to the high street and his brand of bathing beauties was relegated to nostalgia. Grinter too was anxious for work and when “Husky” Hawkes and Grinter collided; the result was the magnificent Blood Freak, shot in Florida on an invisible budget utilizing mostly student actors who were supposedly duped into appearing in the film as they were quite unaware that they were working on anything other than one of Mr. Grinter’s sex-citing film classes (Yes, Grinter amazingly held acting classes in his many spare hours).

A hasty SOS goes out to senior Williams from his desperate son about Abby’s dreadful and rapidly deteriorating condition. As Williams decides to return to help Abby, the long-awaited confrontation between the forces of good and evil are about to collide in the shape of Eshju’s evil spirit and the sage man of God Father Williams (formerly Blacula).
Superlative scenes of levitation, spinning limbs and speaking in tongues follow – all the usual stuff. However, this film is such a monumental rip off, no wonder it got taken to court. Almost every second scene is directly lifted from The Exorcist including scenes from the hospital where Abby is being tested, and a scene where “Help Abby” is written on a mirror in the same way “Help Me” was scrawled across Regan’s stomach.

The levitation, the demons switching to different languages and especially Greek are also a bit too close to Exorcist territory, but then it appears that William Girdler the director was not at all concerned that somebody might claim his work to amount to a blatant piece of plagiarism, however epic the results might be. It is as though Girdler was hugely impressed with The Exorcist, came back home and cooked up his “improvised and improved” Afro version for inner city audiences.

To the films credit, it moves along at a cracking pace and exudes typical blaxploitation charm with its super cheesy effects and its typically 70’s style soul-funk background music and made-for-TV tackiness. Speed is simply fine as Abby, scowling, growling and cackling to great effect while Marshall turns in a sober, underplayed performance as the Father Williams.

Austin Stoker lends his brand of coolness to events, but major credit must go to Girdler who keeps things moving along nicely and even manages a fleeting moment or two of real terror amidst the campy farce that most of the movie consists of.

Mostly the film is a delightfully shameless rip off, done with style and energy and acted with the exuberance that this kind of film requires to succeed. It is undoubtedly an enormous rip off, but a charming one, and one that after all these years needs to be admired by a wider audience. The film is a true cult horror classic and must be considered essential viewing for scholars of the genre.