"Abby"(1974)d/William Girdler

Our main course this evening, a delightfully rotten and rare blaxploitative Exorcist rip-off from the man responsible for The Manitou(1979) and Day of the Animals(1977), the late William Girdler.Served upon a gilded platter for your unwavering approval then, a golden turd known as Abby, the only Exorcist clone to ever be pulled from the theaters, after AIP maven Sam Arkoff caved to pressure from a Warner Brothers lawsuit, even after a similar suit against Film Ventures' Beyond the Door(1974) proved ineffective.As a result, Abby plummetted from a profitable first theatrical run to an urban legend of sorts, rarely seen but often discussed.Luckily for proponents of such fare, the movie finally turned up as half of a budget double feature dvd with Magdalena(1974), yet another Exorcist rip-off, from a company called Music Video Distribution in 2007.Granted, the print stinks, but then that's a vast improvement over the shoddy eye-straining, tenth generation, ghostly VHS-ripped bootlegs that had floated around for ages beforehand.Girdler might have had himself an original horror movie on his hands had he chosen to explore the possibilities of the actual Nigerian Yoruba religion, or its trickster deity, Èsù, but he went for the quick, exploitative buck instead, as was par for the course of his entire filmography.Lovers of inept schlock can rejoice over his hasty decision to copy Friedkin's hit, as his total failure on every level is often unintentionally hilarious stuff, making for a pretty good time for anybody interested in watching it.Like trying to reproduce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a chunk of drywall and a paintball gun...

Who's a black archaeologiss wiff a pith helmet dat juss don' miss?Garnet Williams(William Marshall)!Can you dig it?
We meet Dr. Williams(William Marshall) as he's rappin' with his students in a park about an upcoming trip to Nigeria, and learn through badly delivered dialogue that some of his students have been grooving on the Yoruba religion of that region themselves, recently.To compliment his doctorate and his PhD(!), the funky world-travellin' humanitarian/archaeologist receives a going away present from the group:a hulking silver cross necklace that's just outta sight,baby.Cut to a Nigerian cave where Williams-in-pith helmet discovers a hollow ebony vessel decorated with carvings of the deity Eshu, which the doctor recognizes by "hair in the shape of a cock's comb" and the "erect penis"(!!).He unwittingly opens it, unleashing the contents upon he and his hapless colleagues, when a vengeful wind machine throws them around the cave amidst a frame-flash of a nappy headed, green latex grillpiece, all sneering away an' sheeeit.Meanwhile, Dr. Williams' son Emmitt(Terry Carter),a minister,and his wife, Abby(Carol Speed) are moving into their new home, bequeathed to his church, with the help of Mama(Juanita Moore), her brother Cass(Austin Stoker), a detective, and Emmitt's deacon, who's a dead ringer for Urkel from 'Family Matters'.Through lots of God-inspired banter, we learn Abby is a certified marriage counselor, on top of being involved in a youth program, and junior choir work.Hurry up and possess this bitch, Eshu, before I toss my cookies.A cold wind blows through that night, shaking the furniture and slamming doors.The next morning, Abby's shower takes on added sexual dimensions, as we see her shadow enveloped by a massive phantasmal apparition.The entity toys with her in the laundry room, and again while she and her mother prepare some chicken(It's Kentucky, what did you expect?) for a social function at the church.The bloody poultry suddenly turns her on(!!!), and she's soon writhing about, flicking her tongue around and slashing her own arm with the knife.

I'll give you a few moments to fully drink this screenshot in...
Emmitt takes notice of Abby's behavior, when, clad in a towel and trying to initiate some in-out with his spouse, a gruff unfamiliar voice tells him that she isn't his ho, and then she pulverizes his junk with a well-placed kick, bouncing on the bed and laughing as he writhes in pain on the floor.During a pre-marital counselling session, she's overcome again by the demon, tearing open her dress in front of the uninterested-looking couple, and exclaiming, "I’m gonna take ol’ long George upstairs and fuck the shit outta him!”, and when Emmitt drags her upstairs(“My God, Abby! Whatever possessed you to do a thing like that?!!?”,he says with a straight face), she tosses him on the bed, slapping the piss out of him and laughing maniacally, before raping him off-camera.After Abby is hospitalized for testing(you know, the same ones Linda Blair had to undergo a year earlier), Dr. Williams returns from Nigeria, causing the young woman to break out of the hospital, bitchslapping anyone who gets in her way("I'm goin' home, bitch!" she exclaims, as she throttles a nurse).After throwing Emmitt and his dad into the walls at the homestead, Abby takes her husband's car and drives downtown, looking to score some real action.The minister runs out into the road and carjacks an older white woman(!), which the detective Cass somehow sweeps under the rug.Abby sataically seduces some soulless homeboys at a disco(and a white guy whose A game consists of W.C. Fields impersonations...seriously), as evidenced by Emmitt's car rocking rhythymically with smoke billowing out of the windows when the preacher and cop finally locate her, and Dr. Williams preparing for the inevitable exorcism right there at the discotheque(!!).Garnet's giant silver cross causes the woman to flee in slo-mo across the dance floor, dripping white foam, levitating, and sprouting furry eyebrows.Williams notes that she is possessed by a minor deity impersonating Eshu, and throws on a daishiki, mixing christianity with Yoruba to cast out the demon, ultimately causing the disco ball to explode(!!!) as her body is freed and the demon is trapped inside the wooden vessel.Abby and Emmitt embrace, despite the fact she's forgotten to take her possession eyebrows off.We then see the couple leaving on vacation, apparently free of criminal charges for the murders Abby committed earlier in the film(not to mention the priest's carjack).Nice.

"I’m not your ho! Shit, you ain’t got enough to satisfy me!” jeers a possessed Abby(Carol Speed).
Marshall will be best remembered by genre fans for his participation in Blacula(1972)and its sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream!(1973).Girdler followed this one up with Asylum of Satan(1974),and his second foray into blaxploitation, 'Sheba, Baby'(1975), starring Pam Grier(generally believed to be her worst effort of the era, well done, Billy!).Though Abby only scores one wop on the ratings scale due to its clearly visible ineptitude, it's never boring, and there are a lot of laughs to be had should you choose to check this one out for yourselves.Worth a look.

Nigerian sex demon or Lou Ferrigno after a night of base-piping. You decide, baby.

"The Manitou"(1978)d/William Girdler

Normally I wait three risings of the sun to take on a review of this magnitude,but Misquamacus will have it no other way.We ring the weekend in here at the Wop with William Girdler's ninth and final film,his personal Star Wars,if Star Wars had a topless Jewess on a hospital bed floating in space shooting laser beams out of her hands at an Indian midget in front of a blue screen in it.Huh???Oh yeah,The Manitou asks the viewer to take in a whole helluva lot before it's over.Adapted for the big screen from a novel by Graham Masterson,the film boasts of quite a cast of characters,including Girdler regulars Jon Cedar and Michael Ansara,who turns the Indian up to eleven here,free of the ethnic jabs he faced from Leslie Nielsen in Day of the Animals(1977),Burgess Meredith,Stella Stevens,50's tv sweetheart Ann Sothern,Susan Strasberg,Tony Curtis as a psychic(!!),and Felix "Twiki" Silla as a reincarnated Indian medicine man foetus(!!!).Girdler's largest budgeted picture was also a big hit in theaters,apparently.I didn't go to see it back then,I wouldn't have appreciated the monumental levels of hokum found here the way I currently do.Make no mistakes,this movie sucks,but in ways no movie has ever sucked before or eaten the big one since.

See you in the fall,Mrs. Herz!
Harry Erskine(Curtis)is a two bit psychic chiseler with a fake moustache and Merlin robe who cons gullible old ladies with his Tarot deck,fifty bucks at a time,when he's not boogieing to disco,pouring beers incorrectly,or butchering the tongue of native American tribes.An ex-flame,Karen(Strasberg),calls him with a problem she's recently developed at the base of her neck.Well,it's less of a problem and more of a malignant tumor.Actually,it's not a tumor,it's a foetus.But it ain't just your average,ordinary,everyday neck foetus,it's a four hundred year old Indian medicine man trying to be reborn into the world.Erskine finds this out after Karen whispers "Pana witchy salatu!" in her post-coital sleep,and one of Erskine's geryatric rubes repeats the same phrase before doing a makeshift raindance,levitating herself down the hallway,and doing a head first flopper down the steps,killing herself.Karen's doctor,Hughes(Cedar),finds this out when he tries to surgically remove the lump which psychokinetically forces him to slice his own hand with the scalpel in the operating room.Erskine holds a seance with his occult buddies,and an Indian head rises out of the coffee table,speaking through Mrs. Karmann(Sothern),a medium."Pana witchy salatu!" again,or panny witchy solutu,if you listen to Erskine.The psychic and gang then turn to anthropological expert Dr. Snow(Meredith) for answers,and the scatterbrained old gent points them towards hiring an authentic Indian medicine man to fight the red-skinned burden growing on his lover's neck.

After seeing rushes of the final effects sequence,Karen(Strasberg) screams her fool head off.
Erskine turns to John Singing Rock(Ansara),who normally waits three risings of the sun to do a job like this,but signs on immediately after berating the white man with the Brooklyn yiddish accent,and the promise of tobacco.After sprinkling sand around Karen's hospital bed and knocking some feathery bones together,the foetus tells Singing Rock through Karen that he is indeed Misquamacus,the most powerful medicine man ever,or Mixmaster,if you listen to Erskine.After pulling himself out of some latex on Karen's back,we see that not only is he the most powerful shaman to ever live,but he's an adorable midget with two different colored eyes,just like David Bowie!No wonder Shorty's got such an attitude.Through ancient Indian rear projection techniques,the mixmaster calls forth a giant lizard/man-in-a-lizard-suit-on-all-fours demon to bite Dr. Hughes on the hand,which he rushes to wrap in gauze,and looks moderately painful.That'll fucking show him who he's fucking with,huh.The pint-sized Pocahontas is just warming up though.He freezes the whole hospital floor(and a nurse),tears the skin off an orderly,then turns Karen's room into a sort of groovy seventies planetarium with some psychedelic throbbing plasma projected behind him.Oh yeah,that's the Devil.When Singing Rock's feathery bones prove no match for the little guy,the "Holy Fuck!" sequence of the movie kicks in.Erskine's love for Karen causes the manitous, or spirits of all the computers and man-made machines in the hospital to attack Misquamacus through Karen,who happens to be floating topless on her hospital bed.Indian magic and the Devil just don't measure up when they're up against kosher bobblers and hand-emitted laser beam effects.Titles then tell us that a boy grew a foetus on his arm somewhere in Asia back in 1969.Arm-foetus?Big fuckin' deal.

Misquamacus(Felix Silla) and his powerful Shamanic blue screen magic.
Strasberg,the daughter of theater director Lee Strasberg, enjoyed a long career in movies and television before succumbing to breast cancer at age sixty in 1999.Her genre films include the incredible Psych-Out(1968)and The Trip(1967),Rollercoaster(1977),and Bloody Birthday(1981).Curtis fathered genre Queen Jamie Lee during his marriage to Janet "Psycho" Leigh,and is still an active painter,no longer interested in movies.The soundtrack by maestro Lalo Schifrin isn't one of his more memorable works,in my honest two hundred lira worth.As always,Girdler accomplishes an entertaining creation,albeit a pretty horrendous one.Check it out,and you'll be laughing out loud during the finale,yourself.Believe me.One unintentionally funny BW on the scale for tonight's entry,but you'll have to excuse me,I've got surgery in the morning.They're removing what looks to be an Olivia Newton John foetus growing out of my armpit that gets bigger everytime I see roller skates or hear disco.The indians say it's a Xanadu manitou.Hey,at least it ain't Gene Kelly.

Seriously,I got no words for this one.

"Day of the Animals"(1977)d/William Girdler

Phew, it's a scorcher out there today, hot enough to fry up a hunk o' scrapple on an old lady's ass.Thanks to the eco-friendly, nature runs amok, b horror movies of William Girdler back in the late seventies, the worst we have to worry about thirty years on is an uneven tan or heatstroke.Back in 1977, with everyone spraying their aerosol cans of Right Guard haphazardly into their smelly armpits, we were depleting the protective ozone layer, and allowing harmful ultraviolet rays through to the earth's surface,which with a little creative license could feasibly set all animals on a kill-crazy rampage against the human beings that cohabitate the planet with them.It COULD happen, or so says the preachy sprawling introduction to our entry this afternoon.Not to mention the dated habit of chucking your garbage out the window of your car while speeding down the highway back then,which brought a tear to the eye of many a native American in groovy public service announcements.And if you think the ignorant white man could make an Indian cry in commercials during the tumultuous seventies, wait til you see what Leslie Nielsen has lined up for them in this flick.In fact,this is the Leslie Nielsen acting clinic those of you who've tired of watching him plod away in slapstick comedy the past twenty-five years have been praying to the casting gods for.Wipe the sweat off your brow,look troubledly upward at the sun,and hike forward,little droogies.

Before Leslie Nielsen was moonwalking at baseball games,he slung racial epithets at Native Americans with the best of 'em.
Steve(Christopher George),with the help of his trusty native American pal(really Syrian,mind you)Santee,leads a gaggle of tourists up a mountain trail,for an exciting weekend of camping,foraging for wild radishes,and fending off dangerous wild animals,driven pazzo by the rapidly depleting ozone layer.Along for the hike are Terry(George's real life wife,Lynda),a young couple in need of therapeutic healing of their tocky relationship,a young couple that seems to be doing just fine,a whiny Jewish matriarch and her young son,a bird-watching nerd,an ex-football star dying of cancer,and a Wall Street ad exec named Jensen(Leslie himself).At the base of the mountain,the townsfolk are experiencing all sorts of nasty attacks by animals that normally don't seek out aggro,leading the military to roll in and declare martial law,evacuating the higher elevations.You know,where our hikers are currently stranded unknowingly.The troubled couple's weekend gets progressively worse when Mandy is attacked by a wolf,and when Frank leads her back down the mountain,she's attacked by a rowdy crew of hawks and vultures,causing her to fall off a ledge onto a fatally phony blue screen effect.Back on the trail, the party is being stalked by a wide range of animals,being annoyed by Mrs. Goodwin's kvetching and Jansen's hateful nicknames for everyone involved.Pretty soon,Jansen splits the party in two,questioning Steve's ability to lead the people to safety,hiking off with the young couple,the mother and her mollycoddled son.

Don't sweat it, sister.That blue screen behind you oughta break your fall.
While Steve's half of the hiking party is being attacked by cougars and wild dogs,Jansen's half is under attack by a shirtless,rain-soaked ad exec who loses his marbles,shouting,"You lily-livered PUNK!I'M running this camping trip!I take what I want and I give ya what I wanna give ya!And right now I want THAT!(pointing to Andrew Stevens' squeeze)C'mon,baby!" throwing women and children to the ground,skewering boyfriends on tree branches,and claiming terrified young girls as his prize in the name of chauvenism, before foolishly trying to bear hug a grizzly bear(!)and eating broken back death in the mountainous mud.What a tour de force by Nielsen.Is it any wonder he's fallen back on comedy since this performance?Jaw-droppingly incredible.In the forest,only Steve,Terry,and Santee survive the ecological onslaught by drifting down river on a raft,and elsewhere,Mrs. Goodwin,her son,and the prize girlfriend weather the storm by hiding out inside a wrecked chopper.By the time the smoke finally clears,men in haz mat suits are sifting through dead animals and men in the streets,rescuing the few shellshocked survivors and scratching their collective dome pieces over how to avoid pissing off Mother Nature in the future.Moral of the story:Be cool to each other,and the planet we live on,or we'll all be sorry,maaaan.

Someone tell little Michelle it's the ozone being depleted, not Peter Pan peanut butter.
This was Girdler's follow-up to his "Jaws with claws" success,Grizzly,the year before,which utilized much of the same cast and locations to earn top independent film of 1976 awards.He directed nine genre films,which included Three on a Meathook,Abby,Asylum of Satan,and The Manitou before losing his life at the age of 30 in a helicopter crash in the Phillipines.Christopher George went on to B movie success in such genre fare as Fulci's City of the Living Dead,Graduation Day,Enter The Ninja,Pieces,and Mortuary before he died of a heart attack in 1983.Lynda Day George worked in Pieces,Beyond Evil,and Mortuary,among several television roles before retiring from acting in the late eighties.Nielsen acted in Prom Night and Creepshow before moving on to an endless series of comedic roles,which he still churns out to this day,at 83 years old!This entry is pretty standard fare,but between some of the effects and Leslie Nielsen's outrageous contributions,you'll definitely enjoy it at least once.Day of the Animals rolls out its sleeping bag with two solid Wops on the almighty rating scale.You hear that,Animals?I take what I want and I give ya what I wanna give ya,you lily-livered punk!

Simply the finest shirtless,ozone-loony Leslie Nielsen v. grizzly bear scene ever committed to celluloid.