31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 4- Abby (1974)

A Blaxploitation Exorcist rip-off.

A pastor goes to Nigeria and accidentally unleashes an ancient malevolent spirit. Oops. His daughter-in-law back in America then starts to change from being a God-fearing, wholesome wife to becoming a possessed randy harlot.

This film is such good fun. The pastor is played by William Marshall who was already known to Blaxploitation audiences as Blacula. Austin Stoker also stars who would later feature in John Carpenter’s masterpiece Assault on Precinct 13 a couple of years later. But it’s Carol Speed as Abby who steals the show. She seems to truly relish her role and brings some much needed spice and vigour to it.

There’s groovy interiors, snappy dialogue and effects that look cheap and nasty even by Exorcist rip-off standards. In fact they make Beyond The Door’s FX look highly innovative by comparison. But that’s all part of the fun.

I love the fact that the exorcism at the film’s conclusion takes place in a downtown bar.

This film made loads of money at the box office but was abruptly taken out of circulation when Warner Bros. issued a lawsuit as they stated that the film ripped-off The Exorcist a bit too much. Abby’s director William Girdler never denied this. The only existing prints are in very bad condition and it’s rumoured that a decent print hasn’t surfaced yet as possibly the lawsuit is still in place which prevents a decent DVD/Blu ray release. It’s also rumoured that the lawsuit also involved all copies of the print to be confiscated by Warner Bros. so that they could destroy it.

I hope this isn’t true. I’d love this film to be released after being restored. In fact, I’d love a Blu ray box set containing all of Girdler’s films. He deserves to be recognised as one of the leading auteurs of brilliant exploitation films.

*** and a half

Soundtrack of the Week- Chi Sei aka Beyond The Door (1974)

There is so much to love about Beyond The Door, the 1974 Exorcist rip-off made in Italy.

Yes, it had a budget that was a tiny fraction of that of the William Friedkin classic but thats part of it’s charm. It also copies similar scenes from it’s parent movie with varying degrees of success. The fact that Juliet Mills from the very popular sitcom The Nanny and the Professor signed up to play the lead only made the film more appealing and more of a draw.

The Franco Micalizzi soundtrack is just as off the wall, bizarre and inappropriate as the rest of the film. It feels more like the score for, in places, a 70’s porno movie, a Blaxploitation movie and an experimental drug inspired counter culture movie.

The edition I own is the Digitmovies edition from 2011.

The soundtrack kicks off with an actual song with vocals named Bargain With The Devil. In a parallel universe this was released as a single and got to the top of the charts.

As the album goes on it gets funkier, sexier and more extreme- not really adjectives usually used for a horror movie score but somehow it works and makes Beyond The Door even more of an enjoyable and unique experience.

Jessica’s Theme is suitably slinky, mysterious and psychedelic (perfect to eat a banana skin to), Dimitri’s Theme is unexpectedly goofy (this was also used in the film’s trailers) and Robert’s Theme has such uplifting lyrics as ‘Theres no hope!’ and ‘No one will help you!’

The bass gets funkier, the flutes get an airing as they do on any self respecting funky 70’s soundtrack (they even get their own track called Flute Sequence!) and the only track approaching something found on a more conventional horror soundtrack is the track for the film’s prologue.

There are also outtakes of the tracks on the album which haven’t previously been released before and these are in mono. The sound quality of this whole edition is superb. Highly recommended.

Day 3- 31 Days of Halloween- The Exorcist (1974)

I feel like I’ve grown up with this film.

This was one film that I remember seeing on the shelves of video stores when I was a child but didn’t get round to seeing before it mysteriously disappeared. Absence made the heart grown fonder and I knew I must see this forbidden fruit.

But when I was at school a friend of mine had the video as his Dad ran a video store which was very fortunate. I borrowed The Exorcist and watched it with my father whilst we were eating our evening meal. A bad mistake.

Then in 1993 on my 18th birthday I went to see the film at the Odeon in York with some friends where it was being shown as a one-off midnight screening. The print was in terrible shape. But it still scared me so much that I spent a sleepless night tossing and turning in bed thinking about what I’d just seen.

Then in 1998 the film was rereleased in cinemas in a digitally remastered form. It looked and sounded amazing. Again I saw it.

Then in 2000 came the ‘Version You’ve Never Seen Before’ that incorporated deleted footage and CGI at different parts of the film.

For my money, the best version is the original.

Yes, everyone knows about the famous (or should that be infamous) scenes that are actually more shocking and effective on screen then in the telling. But this is a multi-layered complex film and demands repeated viewings to reap everything the film has to offer.

Captain Howdy, Burke Dennings, Friedkin playing with our senses in certain scenes (check out the scene where Chris sees Karras and Dyer for the first time but we don’t hear what they say as theres a jumbo jet going overhead or the dream sequences involving the St Christopher necklace falling to the ground and you’ll see what I mean), the epic and haunting otherworldly sequence in Northern Iraq, Chris’ speech about why she wants an exorcism (some of the best acting I’ve ever seen- although I could say the same about all of this film), the desecrations, ‘Have you seen what shes done? Your cunting daughter!’, ‘Your mother sucks cocks in Hall!’, ‘The sow is mine!’…theres so much to love.

Look out for actor Paul Bateson in one of the murder scenes. He was later charged with murder and was the inspiration for Friedkin’s later masterpiece, Cruising.