Meaning and origin of Abby

Abby was a 1974 blaxploitation/horror film about a woman who is possessed by an African sex demon. The film starred William H. Marshall, best known for portraying the lead role in Blacula, Terry Carter, and Carol Speed as the title character, Abby. It was directed by William Girdler, who cowrote the film's story with screenwriter Gordon Cornell Layne. The film was a financial success, but was pulled from theaters after the film's distributor, American International Pictures, were accused of copyright violation by Warner Bros., who saw the film as being derivitive of The Exorcist, and filed a lawsuit against AIP.

Bishop Garnett Williams (William H. Marshall) is a respected authority on African religions. His son, Emmett (Terry Carter) is a minister with a kind, adoring wife named Abby (Carol Speed). While Garnett is on an archeological dig in Africa, he comes across a religious icon that represents the sexual deity Eshu. When he opens the box, he releases a demon from captivity, and it manifests itself back in the United States by taking possession of Abby. Abby's personality quickly changes. She becomes unstable and lapses into demonic outbursts of increasingly supernatural proportions, until finally she is confined to a hospital. She forcibly escapes, setting out to follow the sexual urges brought on by Eshu. Garnett returns to the United States to confront the demon before it destroys Abby utterly.


Production
Abby was written and produced by William Girdler, a filmmaker who specialized in exploitation pictures that were often in the horror genre. Films such as Grizzly and The Manitou are some of Girdler's more notable productions, while Abby achieved a more infamous reputation due to the fact that it was accused of copyright violation by Warner Bros., who felt it was a direct copy of The Exorcist. Warner Bros. won their court case, and Abby was eventually pulled from theaters, but not before it was able to take in almost $4 million.
Abby was filmed in 1974 in Louisville, Kentucky. Carol Speed landed the part of Abby after the original actress demanded a masseuse, for which the film's low budget had no provisions. Speed's agent recommended her to Girdler, and she flew to Louisville, meeting her director for the first time on the set.

In one scene, Speed's character was required to sing a song in church, and the song was one that Speed herself composed, "Is Your Soul A Witness?".

The production of the film was met with an unusual threat when Louisville experienced a series of tornadoes that tore through the area around the set of Abby. Speed recalled spending time with co-star Juanita Moore huddled in the lobby of their hotel, wrapped in blankets for protection. "Juanita and I immediately left the set when the daytime sky turned pitch black. We ended up rolled in some blankets on the lobby floor. Ramada had built this nice hotel, but no basement or tornado shelter. Just glass windows...everywhere."
William Marshall was vocal about his unhappiness with the production of Abby, mostly because he'd been promised certain script revisions that never materialized. Marshall did add certain elements to the film regarding the Yoruba religion.

Critical reaction
The tone and content of Abby seems to have left it difficult to take seriously. The New York Times review published December 26, 1974, mentioned that "Abby is more silly than shocking even if it seems to take itself seriously."

Scarcity of prints
Abby was out of circulation for many years, partially due to the lawsuit instigated by Warner Bros., and also because of the uncertain propriety of distribution rights. The ownership of the original film elements of Abby is still in question. As of October 2006, the film is only available on home video in one version, a DVD released by CineFear. It appears to have been transferred from a visually flawed 16mm print of the film, which is possibly the only format in which celluloid prints of Abby are still found. This is the only commercially available presentation of Abby to date
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