Abby
Directed by William Girdler
Released: 1974
Starring: Carol Speed, William Marshall, Terry Carter, and Austin Stoker
Running Time: 89 minutes
Reviewed by Eric Grubbs

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Abby (played by Carol Speed), a loveable, church-going, minister’s wife, moves into a new house with her husband and her mother. Right after they move in, a demon of sexuality is accidentally released from an old box found in Nigeria. The demon possesses Abby and she proceeds to wreak havoc; first on everyone close to her and then the people around the city where she lives. Doctors attempt to cure her but it soon becomes apparent that only an exorcism can free Abby.

There’s a good reason why William Friedkin wanted The Exorcist to be as real as possible: demon possession can come across as incredibly hokey if done wrong. Director William Girdler (The Manitou, Grizzly) brings us Abby, is a prime example of how silly this topic can come across. But as an example of blaxploitation, the film is rather watchable.

Not surprisingly, Abby was sued out of distribution by Warner Brothers because they thought the film was too much of an Exorcist rip-off. Now Abby isn’t exactly a rip-off nor is it vastly different from The Exorcist. To put it simply, it’s the basic idea of The Exorcist reframed as a blaxploitation movie. The most important distinction is that Abby is not scary. Not even for a minute. Even at 89 minutes, it seems long and anti-climactic.

All this said, there is something rather amusing about a woman being possessed by a demon of sexuality. Rather than talking about making love and being loved, the demon makes Abby spew profane and explicit diatribes about coitus and promiscuity. Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.

Abby has some decent acting all around, especially with Carol Speed as Abby. She carries the film quite well. A number of the main cast members were previously in other well-known blaxploitation films: Speed was in The Mack and Disco Godfather, William Marshall who plays Bishop Garnet Williams was in Blacula, and Terry Carter was in Foxy Brown. So the fact that a movie like Abby got made in the first place (and did some decent box office before being pulled from theaters) makes sense in hindsight.