Wednesday, August 20, 2014

ABBY 1974 (CINEFEAR)

One of the most underrated horror films ever.

Carol Speed stars as Abby, a young woman who is married to a minister (Terry Carter) and whose father-in-law (William Marshall)is in Africa exploring caves and doing archeology work. He accidentally lets loose a demon of sexuality and it immediately takes possession of Abby.

Soon Abby is doing strange things such as using violence on her husband and spewing vulgar things out of her mouth. Her husband calls his father who flies back from Africa. Abby is put in a hospital but escapes and goes on a small spree of finding different sexual partners to use and sometimes kill.

Her father in law must perform an exorcism to save her life.

This is an excellent example of a horror film with an all black cast. William Girdler directed this in Louisville, Kentucky with a group of people who knew how to make horror films. Marshall is great as always, and Carol Speed is perfect for the role. This was one of many blaxploitation films made during the 70's and is probably one of the most obacure.

The reason for this is Warner Brothers sued to keep the film from being shown as they claim it was a direct rip off of their film "The Exorcist", and while this is true, it also has a lot of originality going for it. I think it is a dirty deal when a large film company can sue others and stop their films from being shown.

Abby has never had an "official" release, but the disc from Cinefear is about as good as it gets. It also contains various extras including a history of the film and radio and TV spots.

The rest of the cast includes Austin Stoker, Juanita Moore, and Charles Kissinger. Highly recommended!!

1 comment:

  1. this movie was released in the theatres my oldest brother took me to see this when I was 9 years old me and my other brother was 10 and I remember being scared as hell everybody in the theater was clapping when the car scene happened.

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