Strong and Moving!

Admirable film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I saw this movie when I was about 5, this movie scared the heck out of me. The idea of a movie where the woman talks like the devil and kills people was very creepy. I remember as a child sitting in the car at the drive in and spending most of my time on the backseat floor behind my moms chair crying. So many years later I was able to but it on Amazon and I watched it again with my brother and mom and family and was like wow this movie was funny in that old campy way but still a little scary. But it was fun to watch. I think it would be a good crowd pleaser, but we have to get a straight copy that does not look so choppy and look like it skips parts as well.

A minister's wife becomes possessed by a demon that was probably unleashed by his father while he was excavating in Nigeria. If you take 'The Exorcist', 'The Amityville Horror' and 'Scream Blacula, Scream', and mash them all together, you have 1974's 'Abby'. I was not expecting much from this film and maybe that's why I am SO shockingly surprised at it's quality. It's not "so bad it's good", it's just good! Although the disco music seems out of place in a horror setting like this, the acting is decent and the story is well told. There is no doubt that the plot is a REALLY close copy of a much more popular movie, but to me that doesn't hurt it one bit. In fact when you see the lead character Abby starting to act weird, you almost feel true sorrow for her and her family because if you ever watched 'The Exorcist', and I'm sure 99.998% of you saw that film before this one, you have some idea of what is in store for them all. Because of Abby's age, they are allowed to show a little more sexual deviance which is a nice evil touch, especially from a minister's wife. The special effects are well done and the constantly changing voices within the possessed lead female are great. The movie itself has a very creepy element to it and it is a little more action packed than it's big studio twin (slightly older twin). In fact, if you just look at it as a sequel to 'The Exorcist' rather than a rip off, I think you'll enjoy it much more. Trust me, Friedkin would much rather have 'Abby' as his sequel than the real 'Exorcist Part 2'! The crew of 'Abby' had plenty of original ideas outside of the film that they were copying and the movie deserves a lot more respect.

Take the essential ingredients of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, add 'fros, flares, fried chicken and funky grooves, and what you have is Abby, the 1974 demonic blaxploitation flick from director William Girdler that unsurprisingly received a great deal of attention from a very unamused Warner Brothers legal department.Just like The Exorcist, the film's supernatural events are kick-started by the discovery of an ancient artifact by an elderly man of the cloth—in this case, it's a small carved box depicting the powerful sex demon Eshu that is unearthed by African-American bishop Garnet Williams (William Marshall). And just like The Exorcist, the discovery of this item results in a case of possession—only instead of a twelve year old girl, the victim is the bishop's daughter in law, Abby Williams (Carol Speed). Within a matter of days, God-fearing Christian Abby is transformed from a gospel singing pillar of the community into a blasphemous, vomiting, sex-mad harlot, eventually driving her desperate husband Rev. Emmett Williams (Terry Carter) to enlist the help of his father to cast out evil Eshu.Instead of the classy style of Friedkin's movie, Girdler's effort is cheap, trashy and unintentionally hilarious, which in my book makes it almost as entertaining as the film it so blatantly rips off. Speed attacks her performance with gusto, coughing, drooling, puking, speaking in guttural fashion, getting slutty with total strangers, and even appearing in cheesy demon make-up for several subliminal flashes that simply scream 'plagiarism'; meanwhile, those around her play their roles with absolute sincerity, doing their utmost to look concerned and frightened (but failing badly).Despite not being in the slightest bit original, shocking or scary, Abby is easily one of the most watchable (ie., funny) Exorcist rip-offs I have seen; I say 'get your mitts on a copy', even if it is the VHS-quality DVD release that seems to be the only version currently available.

It always ticks me off when the drooling fanboy geeks on various internet web sites specializing in rare, obscure and offbeat cult cinema savagely ridicule particular DVDs because the transfers aren't polished and spit-shined to crystalline sparkling perfection or the discs don't have enough fancy-schmancy extras to appease their picky snotnose expectations. The unjustly vilified Cinefear DVD for William Girdler's enjoyably trashy 70's blaxploitation demonic possession hoot "Abby" is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. 70's drive-in flick aficionados the world over should be rejoicing that this heretofore hard-to-find and never officially available on video feature has been rescued from oblivion and put out on DVD so the option to see it is a valid and easily pursuable one. The fact of the matter is that whenever a movie comes out on DVD it gets a second lease on life and another chance to be discovered by a new audience that might have missed it when it first came out. Cinefear should be applauded for putting "Abby" out on DVD instead of being fiercely ridiculed for same. Contrary to what the hateful naysayers have articulated on numerous DVD review web sites the DVD itself is actually quite good. Besides a perfectly acceptable quality transfer, the extras alone make it a solid and praiseworthy release: Said tasty extras include the theatrical trailer, a radio spot, a still and poster gallery, and, best of all, an intelligent, informative and well-written essay on the troubled history of this gnarly little nugget. So ignore all the undeserved negative criticism and give the DVD a chance. It's well worth checking out and makes for a sound addition to your horror exploitation library.