Director: William Girdler
Cast: William Marshall, Terry Carter, Austin Stoker, Carol Speed

Though the news might constantly bring up stories about negative things that are happening in our world right now, there are still some great things about living right in this particular moment. One of those things is the many way we can access thousands of movies, from Blu-Ray to streaming. Although in this day and age of ours we now have access to more movies than any other time, there are still some movies that are extremely difficult or just plain impossible to watch. There are various reasons for this. One example is the 1959 musical Porgy And Bess. Based on the opera of the same name by George and Ira Gershwin, the movie did not please the Gershwin estate. Because of this, the Gershwin estate, which still has some hold over the movie, has refused to negotiate any talks about getting the movie on television or home video. Finding a bootleg copy of it has been called nearly impossible to do, especially a bootleg copy that's in reasonable shape. The 1979 disco vampire movie Nocturna is apparently being held back from a re-release because its star/producer Nai Bonet is upset about the nude scenes she provided. And as you probably know, the issue of music rights has often held back movies from getting rereleased. There is another reason that some movies get held back from some sort of re-release that would introduce the movies to a new audience, and that is plagiarism. No doubt you have heard many stories from Hollywood or other film industries where someone has accused some party of stealing something from an idea to a whole story for a movie. When this kind of thing happens, it can be a major headache for all concerned, especially when it's ultimately decided that the movie is a work of plagiarism, and then is forced to be withdrawn for either a long time... or forever.

Seeing what happens to movies that are withdrawn due to accusations of plagiarism can be really interesting. The earliest example I was able to dig up after doing a little research was the 1922 classic German silent horror movie Nosferatu. The estate of author Bram Stoker felt that the movie strongly resembled the Stoker novel Dracula (which was still under copyright), and they took the filmmakers to court and won, with the court ordering all copies of the movie to be destroyed. Fortunately, a few prints slipped away, and the movie is widely accessible today due to its public domain status. Then there was the case of the 1932 Joan Crawford movie Letty Lynton. A court case started by the two playwrights of the stage play Dishonored Lady ruled that movie studio MGM had copied the stage play too much and without permission. The writers were awarded damages, and MGM was forced to withdraw the movie permanently. Today, if you are willing to conduct a long search, you might find a bootleg copy, the only way currently to watch it. Eleven years later, two other playwrights sued the RKO movie studio for their movie Ghost Ship, claiming producer Val Lewton had copied a play they had written and submitted to Lewton. The court ruled in the playwrights' favor, awarding them damages and forbid RKO from further releases of the movie anywhere. Decades later, when the movie drifted into the public domain, it was finally available again, this time on TV and home video. And years earlier, I talked about the 1980 Italian movie The Last Shark (a.k.a. Great White). Universal Pictures thought the movie deeply copied their own shark movie Jaws (and Jaws 2 for that matter.) They sued and won, and it was ruled that The Last Shark was to be permanently withdrawn from North America. For years, anyone in North America who wanted to see the movie had to get bootlegs from video releases in other continents. However, in the last few years, the movie suddenly became available in North America on disc and streaming, so I guess some sort of deal was made fairly recently with Universal Pictures.

I wonder why Universal Pictures has not to date sued the makers of the subsequent 1995 Italian shark movie Cruel Jaws, which reportedly uses (without permission) footage from Universal Pictures' Jaws and Jaws 2 (I've heard it also steals footage from The Last Shark as well.) But the withdrawn movie I really want to talk about in this review is Abby. A year earlier, the box office smash The Exorcist had been released, and its owners (Warner Brothers) felt that Abby - a hit as well, though on a much smaller scale - resembled The Exorcist too much. They sued the studio behind Abby (American-International Pictures), and won. The movie was then permanently withdrawn, and it got no further release in any format - officially. Bootleg copies have leaked out, and after I found one, I was interested to see what the movie was like. Was it a blatant rip-off? Was the lawsuit unjustified? Most importantly, was the movie good? I had to find out. The movie starts off by introducing us to Dr. Garnet Williams (William Marshall, Blacula), who has both been educated in archeology and religious studies. In Africa, he participates in an archeological dig that eventually unearths a casket that was apparently used by ancient followers of an evil spirit known as Eshu. Naturally, Williams is eager to open the casket and find its contents. However, when it is opened, some sort of great force is released. It is, of course, the spirit of Eshu, and as soon as it's released, the first thing it does is... travel across the ocean to the city of Louisville, Kentucky. Huh? Well, there is a connection - the preacher son of Dr. Williams, Emmett (Terry Carter, Foxy Brown) lives in Louisville with his wife Abby (Carol Speed, Black Samson), with Abby's policeman brother Cass (Austin Stoker, Time Walker) also in the city. When Eshu reaches Louisville, it gets into the body of Abby, and soon enough she is showing the signs of demonic possession, from using foul language to foaming at the mouth. After Emmett does everything he can with the help of his brother-in-law Cass and rules out any other possibilities, he realizes Abby is possessed, and only his father might be able to save her soul.

So... is Abby a rip-off of The Exorcist or not? Well, I will admit that Abby was certainly inspired by the earlier movie. If you look hard, you can see similarities between the two movies, such as both movies early on dealing with a religious figure skilled in archeology participating in a dig in a foreign land, both movies having a possessed female who curses with a raspy voice, the female going though a thorough medical examination to try and find a physical ailment that has changed her behavior, and (of course) an exorcism happening at both movies' climaxes. Actually, I could list a few more similarities, but all the same I think the movie doesn't get into blatant rip-off territory, though I admit it's a close call. Abby does have some major differences, one obvious difference being that virtually all the characters in the movie are African-American. But come to think of it, I am hard pressed to list anything in the movie that is "African-American" other than the race of most of the characters; race is never brought up at any point. I don't think the screenplay would need any real rewriting to involve characters of any race. However, if anyone was to remake this movie, I would certainly want them to rewrite other aspects of this script. For starters, the opening of the movie has an unbelievable amount of blatant exposition awkwardly spoken by the characters as they are out on a picnic, continuing in the next scene as well, explaining who is who and what they are doing or going to be doing very soon. It's worse than you might think because most of this exposition is stuff that the characters should have already known in the first place and didn't need to be brought up again. The movie gets really embarrassing with this when it resorts to people spelling out loud the name of the evil spirit Eshu so critics like myself in the audience can be sure how it would be written when we sit down after the movie to give it a proper written thrashing.

But there are other problems with Abby's script. While viewers might just glaze their eyes during all the exposition, their eyes might completely close later, because the movie is filled with obvious padding. The worst part is when just before the climatic exorcism, the possessed Abby takes a night out on the town with the intent to sleep with multiple men to satisfy the insatiable spirit inside of her. This brings the story to a dead halt for quite some time. Actually, it might have been okay had the movie used this as an excuse to showcase nudity and sex, but there is none of that in this sequence - or anywhere else in the movie, for that matter. Prepare for further disappointment with my additional revelation that the "R" rating Abby received is pretty much just for foul language and not much else - no blood, no gore, but there is some slimy saliva and vomit. Without that gushy stuff as a crutch, director William Girdler (Grizzly) doesn't seem to be able to make the horror and shock sequences all that creepy or entertaining. While Girdler does use director techniques in the film such as crane shots or tracking shots, when it comes to directing the meat of the movie - the horror - he usually sticks to a few basic camera angles and doesn't shove in as much energy as he possibly can. This is really evident in the climatic exorcism sequence, so it's a real letdown. Reports I uncovered revealed that Girdler was working with a fairly limited budget, so that may have reduced his resources and ability. Sometimes he has to do things like shake the camera when the characters are experiencing seismic tremors in their homes, or really limit the use of makeup to depict the possessed Abby.

But Girdler's biggest misstep is that he makes much of Abby a somewhat dull exercise. I already mentioned that there is a lot of padding to be found, but even when things manage to move a little faster, it's almost all done with dialogue rather than major actions or major events. There is a lot more talk than anything that would be considered even remotely terrifying. And when the characters are engaged in all of this talk, they seem to have been left to their own devices without any assistance from Girdler. The biggest star in the movie, William Marshall, seems to be delivering his lines with just enough dignity to try and cover up his obvious disinterest with playing a character written to have much less depth than his most famous role of Blacula two years earlier. For that matter, the character of Abby is also quite thinly written, though actress Carol Speed does seem to at times giving it the old college try, a few times being quite effective, such as when her recently possessed character gets upset after she cuts herself with a knife without knowing why she did that. The other members of the principal cast also show signs of talent here and there despite being hampered with various limitations, such as when the character of Abby's mother (Juanita Moore, O'Hara's Wife) abruptly disappears from the story for a long time and then suddenly pops up again at the very end without revealing where she had been all of this time. With everything I have mentioned about Abby up to this point, you can probably guess why I really think the movie has been kept withdrawn from the public for decades and why no one seems to really want it officially re-released. Not because of any orders from any legal court, but instead because the movie is such a disappointment that there would be few potential viewers in this day and age who would enjoy seeing it.

(Posted October 25, 2025)