General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Abby (1974 film)

Abby is a 1974 American blaxploitation (1970s genre of films made for and starring Black audiences) horror film directed by William Girdler, in which a pastor's wife (Carol Speed) is possessed by Eshu, a demon of the Yoruba religion, and is exorcised by her father-in-law (William Marshall). Produced in Louisville, Kentucky, and distributed by American International Pictures (AIP), it earned over $4 million in its first month before a Warner Bros. copyright-infringement lawsuit over its similarity to The Exorcist (1973) forced it out of theaters, and the settlement has kept it largely unavailable ever since.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	25 December 1974, rated R, 91–92 minutes (AFI Catalog lists 89 minutes for some prints)¹^•²
Director and writers	William Girdler; screenplay by G. Cornell Layne and Girdler¹
Principal cast	William Marshall, Terry Carter, Austin Stoker, Carol Speed, Juanita Moore¹^•³
Production	Mid-America Pictures, a merger of David Sheldon of AIP and Girdler, based in Louisville, Kentucky; working title Possess My Soul¹
Box office	Budget approximately $200,000; over $4 million earned in the first month of release⁴^•²
Legal outcome	Warner Bros.' 1975 lawsuit settled out of court for an undisclosed cash payment; the film cannot be reissued without Warner Bros. permission¹
Availability	No official home video release in the U.S.; almost all 35mm prints have disappeared from circulation²^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot and cast

Reverend Garnet Williams (William Marshall), a theologist researching the Yoruba religion, unwittingly unleashes the demon Eshu while investigating a temple in Nigeria.⁵^•⁶ Back in Louisville, his son Emmett (Terry Carter), a pastor, moves into a new house with his wife Abby (Carol Speed), who begins to behave in foul-mouthed, sexually aggressive ways and displays powers such as moving objects with her mind.⁵ Emmett calls his father back, and the film climaxes with an exorcism not in a domestic setting but in a downtown Louisville bar.⁵ The cast also includes Austin Stoker as Detective Cass Potter and Juanita Moore as "Momma" Potter.³

The African mythology was a deliberate distinguishing choice. Marshall, unhappy with the final script, successfully lobbied for the Nigerian mythos, which gives the film a personality distinct from The Exorcist's Judeo-Christian demonology and opens subtexts about identity and colonialism.⁵ The gospel song Abby sings in church, "My Soul Is a Witness," was written and performed by Carol Speed herself.⁴

Production

Girdler, a Louisville-based director who had cut his teeth on Navy films and local commercials, launched a scrappy studio in 1972 with the goal of turning out fast, cheap takes on horror and exploitation hits.² Abby was his fourth feature.⁵ The production company, Mid-America Pictures, represented a merger between David Sheldon of American International Pictures and Girdler himself, and was also based in Louisville.¹ Trade papers announced principal photography under the title Possess My Soul for March 1974, and the film was shot on location in Louisville.¹ Although Box reported an autumn 1974 release date, the film did not reach theaters until Christmas Day.¹

The Exorcist lawsuit

Abby arrived one year after Warner Bros.' The Exorcist, and contemporaries saw the resemblance immediately. A Box review of 23 December 1974 wrote that the film replicated The Exorcist "down to the camera angles," while noting that it changed the formula by making the possessed character an adult woman rather than a child, allowing a more sexually explicit narrative.¹ Warner Bros. filed suit in 1975 against Mid-America Pictures and American International Pictures, claiming Abby was "substantially similar to its own picture" and that the studio suffered damages from its release.¹

The financial stakes were concrete. AIP made over $4 million on the film in a single month before the lawsuit forced it out of theaters.² According to the Hollywood Reporter, the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed cash payment, with the stipulation that Abby could not be reissued without Warner Bros. permission.¹ Girdler never saw any of the profits; the settlement came shortly before his death in a 1978 helicopter accident while scouting locations, at a point when he had directed nine features.⁴^•²

Availability and reputation

Because of the settlement, the film has been difficult to see for decades: it has never had an official home video release in the United States, and almost all 35mm prints have vanished from circulation.²^•⁴ This scarcity has made it one of the notable "film maudits" of grindhouse cinema, screened occasionally from surviving 16mm prints.²

Critical opinion has split along predictable lines. Some reviewers treat it as a step-by-step imitation of The Exorcist;⁷ others argue it should not be dismissed as plagiarism, pointing to Carol Speed's physical performance and the film's substitution of Gospel and Yoruba mythology for the original's Catholic framework.⁸^•⁹ Marshall, a Shakespearean-trained actor already famous to blaxploitation audiences as Blacula, is widely credited with holding the climactic exorcism together through sheer presence.⁹ The film was even nominated for "The Worst Blaxploitation Film Ever Made" in The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), a distinction its defenders attribute more to its closeness to The Exorcist than to its own quality.⁹ Among scholars and fans of 1970s Black horror, it now sits alongside Blacula, Ganja & Hess, and Sugar Hill as a touchstone of the blaxploitation horror cycle.¹⁰

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026