I'm going to get this out of the way now. I don't care for horror movies. A psychological thriller every now and then is fine, but demons, vampires, zombies and all that bore me. I say that to let you know I've never seen the Exorcist films. Abby is a film that was billed as The Black Exorcist in many places. I'm just letting you know I won't be drawing any Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast the two because I've only seen one.
Now that we've got that out of the way Abby is a 1974 film staring well know actors like William Marshall, look him up you know him even if you don't think you did. Carol Speed who is a mainstay in blaxploitation classics such as The Mack, and Black Samson. Austin Stoker from Planet of The Apes. Lastly, Juanita Moore who has more acting credits than I have time to list spanning over 50 years of constant work and accolades including being only the 5th African American to be nominated for an Academy Award. Seriously, look up her history, she played a lesbian in the 50s when it was dangerous to be black, a woman or LGBTQ, she portrayed all three at once.
Anyway, Abby follows the family of Dr. Garrett Williams an archeologist studying the Yoruba religion.During a trip he awakens an ancient spirit that travels from Africa all the way to America and possesses Abby Williams, the wife of Garrett's son. It starts with Abby randomly falling ill in church only to jump up drooling and trying to rape a man after throwing him through the church doors. The entire congregation just looks on and watches in confusion as only one person goes to his rescue. Abby is later at home and her husband Emmett asks her if she wants to have sex and she kicks him in a very painful place for a man to be kicked only to be told "you ain't got enough to satisfy me."
Later she's sitting with some friends and she tells them "all men aren't created equal so before you marry him make sure you see what he's got. In fact, I'm going to take ol George upstairs and fuck the shit out of him," before ripping open her dress. They take Abby to a hospital to be examined and all hell breaks loose. She causes a scene and slips out in the panic. They discover she's possessed and needs to have the demon removed before midnight or she'll die. The problem is she's hit the town to have a good time. They track her down and perform an exorcism right there in the club. Everyone lives happily ever after bringing a new meaning to the song lyric "Last night Latifah saved my life in the club."
So, the movie is bad. I think that was the point. It was sort of like Scary Movie before Scary Movie. As much as it was an original story, they also did a good job of just poking fun at the Exorcist film with little nods here and there that I had to Google to understand. Some of the cast members also made jokes about the set being haunted by ghosts and tornadoes coming. It wasn't full blown parody but some of the things that had to purposely be making fun of the Exorcist from what I've read.
For example, Abby's possession was a mild upset stomach and she used curse words and wanted to have sex. Attempting to rape someone is way out of line even if you are possessed by a demon. But, a lot of it just seemed like her talking about sex to other people. Maybe because it was the 70s and women weren't supposed to talk about or enjoy sex that I found this funny. I was sitting on the couch laughing and thinking, women talk about sex all the time, how is that possession?
Abby is a good movie because they clearly took the time to lay out a plot that wasn't unnecessarily convoluted. It's also pretty funny because when you think about some things you wonder if she's really possessed or just trying to push society forward by talking about sex, before she attempts to rape someone. There's special effects and they're very bad. Mainly because it was the 70s. It's worth a watch or even a skim through just for the comedic value. Some of the jokes were written in and some of them were created by time which makes fools of us all.
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