ABBY (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

As of this writing ABBY can only be seen in greymarket editions, thanks to an injunction against the film's producers by Warner Brothers, which claimed that the film infringed upon their franchise property THE EXORCIST. In truth there's little resemblance between that film and the one directed and co-written by William (GRIZZLY) Girdler. Probably some lawyer decided that if Warners didn't stomp down on this little production, some other big studio would have been encouraged to pirate the property, which would get its first sequel three years later.

ABBY centers upon a too-good-to-be-true family (so often the automatic victims of horrific menaces). Reverend Emmett Williams (Terry Carter) is happily married to wife Abby (Carol Speed), who regularly attends church with her mother (Juanita Moore), and the family also has good relations with Abby's cop brother Cass (Austin Stoker). The only odd element in the mix is Emmett's father Garnet (William Marshall). Though Garnet wears a Catholic collar and is called a bishop, he shows in his first scene unusual knowledge of pagan African religion. As the film opens he departs the States to participate in an archaeological dig in Africa.

His intellectual pursuits, though, unleash an African demon from its burial tomb, and the demon zips all the way to the New World to take possession of Abby Williams. To be sure, from the first it's clearly not a Judeo-Christian spirit, but one of the "orishas" of the Yoruba religion. Some parts of the script claim that the spirit is the sex-god Eshu, though other parts imply that it's some lesser spirit posing as the Yoruba deity. 

At any rate, Carol begins acting like a sex-fiend and tossing her husband around like a handball. (Since ABBY was a very cheap movie, scenes of the diminutive Abby flinging big men around is nearly the only "special FX" on display.) When Abby almost kills a woman, Emmett sends for his father, who flies back to the States. He fails to counter the demon's evil magic at first, but after a long and rather monotonous pursuit-scene, Garnet, Emmett and Cass corner Abby in a disco (where she tries to pick up men), and successfully cast out the evil spirit, so that everything's copacetic again.

The script has a few interesting touches. In the big exorcism scene, Garnet strongly implies some identity between the Christian god he officially worships and Olorun, the supreme god of the Yoruba. This would be a lot more interesting if Garnet had any background to explain how he formulated these syncretic notions. But even though Garnet accidentally causes Abby's possession, he's a flat character barely redeemed by Marshall's patented orotund voice. Abby Williams is no better. In contrast to the Linda Blair character in EXORCIST, Abby has no character as such, so seeing her becoming a nasty skank has no resonance. Oddly, though I've usually thought Terry Carter to be an undistinguished performer, he delivers the strongest acting in ABBY, as a nice guy trying to cope with disaster. Not that his character runs any deeper, of course.

The film bears slight similarity to some of the early all-black features of the thirties and forties, like Spencer Williams' 1941 BLOOD OF JESUS. In some of these films, protagonists were faced with fateful choices between the rigorous road of Christianity and the easy blandishments of Satan. There's a tiny glimmer of that potential in ABBY, particularly when the demon celebrates the joys of unrestrained carnality, though the conclusion doesn't build on that potential.