Of all the imitators spawned in the wake of 1973’s The Exorcist, why did Warner Bros. legally suppress Abby? It is hardly a Xerox, even if director William Girdler (Grizzly) attempts an uncomfortable medical-test scene and also has his possessed protagonist orally expel fluids — not pea-soup vomit, but that watery foam my shih tzu yaks up on the carpet instead of the tile.
Abby is infamous for being the blaxploitation genre’s take on William Friedkin’s aforementioned film, following other Afro-centric boogeyman-benders as Blacula, Blackenstein and Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde. (I guess The Blaxoricst was deemed too crass?) The God-fearing Abby (Carol Speed, The Big Bird Cage) and her reverend hubby, Emmett (Terry Carter, Foxy Brown), move into a new home while Emmett’s dad, Prof. Williams (William Marshall, the two-time Blacula), investigates a cave in Nigeria that once was the site of black-magic rituals. In doing so, he opens a box that unleashes a demonic spirit that somehow — Girdler does not explain it — enters Abby’s body half a world away, causing her to masturbate in the shower.
At first, signs of her soul takeover are fairly benign, like stuff blowing around the room — the kind of paranormal activity that can be defeated with a paperweight. But then shit gets real as Abby deliberately slices open her arm with a knife, curses in a deep voice (“I’m not your ho!”), kicks Emmett in the nuts and laughs about it, and tries to hump the male clientele at her marriage counseling office — a real practice-killer, that. The prof hurries home to play Max Von Sydow to his son’s Jason Miller before this Linda Blair lays every dude in a bar within a six-block radius. The devil literally made her do it!
A step above Girdler’s usual level of awfulness begets entertainment, as Abby turns out rather well, rip-off or not; “opportunist” is a more correct term for the director than “thief.” Marshall is, as always, a commanding presence, and it’s as if the rest of the main cast rose to the task. Speed delivers a solid and sympathetic performance, except when she is called upon for lip-and-tongue action, and as brothers, Carter and Austin Stoker (John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13) make an appealing pair of grounded heroic Everymen. Cartoon voice actor Bob Holt deserves some credit for embodying Satan’s pipes in order to sell Abby’s Ol’ Scratch routine, but I’ve got to give it up to Girdler: His not-quite-subliminal cuts of the demon’s face register as legitimately disturbing. —Rod Lott