It was inevitable that during the Blaxploitation cycle
of the early 1970s, the Devil would try to possess some of the profits from
1973’s The Exorcist by association. American International Pictures rushed into
production with Abby, the tale of a woman taken over by an evil spirit claiming
to be Eshu of the Yoruba religion.
Whilst the subject matter and some plot threads have
commonality with The Exorcist, William Girdler, a later accomplished
exploitation director of such films as Grizzly , managed to inject enough
original and amusing elements for this beast to work its demonic charms as a
stand-alone. Most obviously, ABBY features an all-black cast. The spirit’s
host, as aforementioned, is also not a child but an adult woman, Abby (Carol
Speed), the wife of a Louisville pastor Rev, Emmet Williams (Terry Carter). She
somehow becomes the possessee after her husband’s father Bishop Garnet Williams
(William ‘BLACULA’ Marshall) releases it in in a cave in Nigeria. He opens the
Pandora’s Box containing Eshu and the dust creates havoc, sending his
assistants flying. Something evil has been freed.
The action inexplicably transfers to America, to Abby’s
home in Louisville, Kentucky. We see the demon sneaks up on her as a sihouette
in the shower and penetrate her almost literally in a scene of almost orgasmic
union for her and ‘it’. As Abby/Eshu later declaims; “Now the fun starts”. Abby begins to manifest symptoms of
take-over, beginning with a coughing fit in church and an attempted kitchen
knife self-harming accompanied by some absurdly lascivious lip-licking. The
dead give-away is the deep rasping EXORCIST-style demonic voice Abby channels
during her marriage guidance counselling work. A recurring mischievous kink of
Eshu’s is that he likes to make his presence felt when her husband is there. There’s
clearly only tolerance for one old time religion in the house now. During the
Rev’s interruption of one of her couples’ sessions, Eshu spits abrasive
profanities at him, culminating in “I’m
gonna take George upstairs and fuck the shit out of him!”.
Such unorthodox treament suggestions don’t go unnoticed,
and after restraining his wife, Emmet surprises us all by contacting his
father. Based on the last time we saw him, this should have been via a séance,
but no, Bishop Garnet is alive and well and continuing his work as normal,
utterly unharmed. The worsening situation with Abby eventually forces him to
catch a plane to Louisville. Getting the evil wind of this, Eshu/Abby
spitefully mocks her husband: “I wanna
thank you for callin’ that motherfuckin’ father of yours. Tell him I’ll be
waiting!”. The Bishop tells Emmet and his son, police Detective Potter
(Austin Stoker) that he is sure Eshu is possessing Abby to terrorise him. Assuming the spirit can’t control a
man of God, couldn’t it have tried to kill him in that cave in Nigeria? Or
taken over someone else back there? We still don’t know why or how it bothered
to come all the way to the USA. Maybe there’s a malevolent Fed-Ex service out
there –or a jiffy bag for ju-ju.
Well, the
devil works not only in mysterious ways but sporadic ones. This evil imp is
only interested in part-time possession it seems. Abby/Eshu can switch to the
appearance of sanity in front of hospital nurses (where she’s hopelessly
treated for brain issues), and more worryingly with nightclub customers. Yes, she’s
goes on the run and cruises for souls like a satanic bar-fly. Her first hapless
conquest is a buttoned-up geek whose lover’s lane tryst with her ends in
car-quaking doom and bursts of smoke out of the window. Serves him right for
picking up (screw)-loose women.
Despite some
sharp action editing and chilling sound design, the horror homicide sequences
have two annoying style impositions; repeated freeze-frame scene endings as
though Girdler doesn’t know how to finish, and an over-kill of incessant subliminal
face-shots (another definite Exorcist rip-off) of various fleeting devil images
who nevertheless all resemble Munsters.
Anyhow, hot
on the demon’s trail are Emmet, the Bishop and Det. Potter. Now, if you thought
Eshu’s transatlantic trip didn’t make sense, wait till you see Potter’s
law-enforcement brain in action. When told that his possessed sister has been
spotted in a bar, he is hilariously obtuse: “What
is she doing in a bar? She doesn’t drink!” He shows similar density when
they case all the local drinking joints; when he shows a photo of Abby to a
bar-owner friend, notice the insert shot of the photo - it looks nothing like
her.
Still, even
with this haphazard sleuthery, the intrepid trio track Abby to a bar for a
low-budget climax where the Bishop performs various incantations while the
others pin her down. He urges the men to “Remain
calm in your Christ centre”. She tries all the Exorcist tricks - appealing
to each man with guilt-trip voices of their loved ones and even a spot of
levitation. This culminates in the Bishop dealing mano-a-demon with the evil
interloper, where he enrages it by insisting it’s an imposter: “You’re nothing but a minor spirit!”
There is a speaking in tongues face-off and then eventually Abby foams at the
mouth with supernatural toothpaste (no pea soup here) and the sinister squatter
exits. Intriguingly, it’s left ambiguous as to who the demon was. Was it Eshu
or a foul impersonator? We’ll never know. Abby and her husband leave for a
plane at the airport in a rushed closing scene. What, no open ending?
Abby is an
enjoyably silly film, which was doing very well at the box office to the tune
of $4m in its first month till Warner Brothers slapped an injunction on it for
alleged copyright violation, forcing it to be pulled from distribution and only
re-surfacing in the last few years on DVD. The remaining prints are of low
quality, supposedly due to Warner’s getting rid of all the decent prints they
could find. I managed to get hold of one such DVD version, which has a couple
of editing jumps and colour distorted moments but it’s still watchable.
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