Abby

By Mr. Tropnevad

Summary

An archeologist accidentally opens a box and frees the spirit of an African sex demon. The spirit leaves the archeological site and goes to America and possesses the archeologist's daughter in law. Now the archeologist must return to America and free the woman of the evil demon.

Expectations Going In

I heard about this movie several years ago and I found a copy in a used book store a while back. It was in a double pack for $5, naturally I couldn’t pass it up. For those that don’t know this movie is the black version of The Exorcist. It came out a year after The Exorcist did and the film makers were sued by Warner Bros. for being a rip off.  Abby is one of the few blaxploitation horror movies and I really don't expect it to be very good. Here is a clip from the movie.



The Bad

Whoever filmed this must have used a home video recorder because the film looks terrible. There is a tint of yellow in just about every scene and I know this isn’t a flaw because movies in the 70s looked better than this. After reading about the other DVD copies that were released I found out that there are no good copies of this movie and the three different versions that are on DVD have a yellow tint or an orange tint to them.

This movie has some of the worst editing I have ever seen. When I watched The Stuff, I thought it had some bad editing but I think this movie would win a Razzie award for it. In the first five minutes you can see where the movie was spliced together and the sound is just as bad. The sound does get better, at least. One of the most memorable scenes for the bad editing was when a man is holding a glass and then it breaks in his hand and there is an immediate jump into the next scene. I was like what the heck? We don’t get to see any sort of facial reaction on any of the characters or an explanation as to why the glass broke.

The story for this movie has several flaws and I was often wondering why a person would do what the characters were doing. An example of this is when Abby’s husband is trying to seduce her. I was thinking why would you be trying to have sex with your wife after she beat a guy up at church and is now talking in a deep manly voice. I wouldn’t do that, I'd think she would try to choke me. Another scene that had me questioning the film was at the beginning of the movie. No archeologist would open up something on the dig site they just found before inspecting it. They would open it inside a lab to preserve what was in it.

When Abby is possessed I couldn’t take her seriously. She was either hitting on random men or her father-in-law and I was like, "Even for a sex god this is going overboard." Then when she yells at her husband she just spews out a string of curse words and I was thinking, "I have seen this before and I don’t find cussing scary." Since she is a demon, naturally she has the ability to throw things around the room, but most people have seen The Exorcist or another demon possession movie, and by this point in the 70s I wouldn’t find that scary anymore. I don’t even find that scary now.

The final scene of the movie I became bored and was ready for the movie to be over. There is too much dialog between all of the actors and I was constantly thinking why don’t you shut up and just get the demon out of her. I really don’t care about an explanation of what the demon is. Another flaw with this scene is that we just watched Abby toss several men across the room but somehow her husband and his friend are able to hold her down. After the demon is taken out of Abby we have one final scene. The movie should have ended but we just have to see that Abby is doing fine. I really didn’t care at this point and we have to have the cheap airport scene where the characters board a plane. This movie is 90 minutes long and I think it could have been cut down to about 70 minutes.

The Good

The film makers did a good job at making this a creepy movie. When you see the house for the first time it looks like an old home that needs a lot of work, but when we have our first night scene we see how creepy the house is. The night scene starts with a thick fog around the house and then we hear a ticking clock and some music. The music and the sound of the clock mixed together does a good job at letting you know something is about to happen and while I have heard this before in other movies. I find these two sounds more terrifying than just some weird music playing.

For those of you that have seen The Exorcist, you should be familiar with the demon head that you see throughout the movie. This movie steals that same idea but instead of a slow build up to see the actual face like in The Exorcist, this movie shows the face right away.  While the face isn’t scary by itself (like in the picture shown here), the way the film makers put it to use could scare someone.

Since this is a blaxploitation film you would figure the music would be good throughout the movie. It really isn’t that good in the beginning but it does get better near the end of the movie. I think it only gets better because of the several driving scenes where there is no dialog and the characters are searching for Abby.

Overall Thoughts

Abby is by no means a good movie and it does have numerous flaws to it. I wouldn’t recommend it to the average person, but if you have seen your fair share of horror movies and enjoy low grade B movies, then yes, you should watch this one. The only way I could find myself watching this again is if someone I knew wanted to watch it or there was a theater that was playing it at midnight. It might be one of those movies that are better with a crowd of people to watch.

If the movie was cleaned up and cut down a little I would definitely try to watch it again. You can buy the copy I have on Amazon for $15 with the German exorcist movie Magdalena (which I might review at a later time) or you can watch it on YouTube.

Overall -Pass