Carol Speed, the lead actress of the cult films “The Mack” and “Abby,” who used her sex appeal for gripping drama in one and campy horror in the other, died January 14 in Muskogee, Okla. She was 76. .
Her family announced her death in a statement published online. The cause was not indicated.
ms. Speed, a California girl with a nose to the nose, became a B-movie headliner in the 1970s, playing a demon and a prostitute. For those roles, her fresh look provided a dramatic contrast, making it all the more striking for her to portray a lurid wish or a melancholic plight.
The blaxploitation genre—a burst of low-budget films in the 1970s featuring black actors and gritty urban themes—often featured female characters forced into danger and misery against their will, but it also granted them powers unusual for women in mainstream Hollywood movies of the time. Like blaxploitation’s most famous actress, Pam Grier, Mrs. Speed fit that mold.
In the horror film “Abby” (1974), Ms. Speed played the title character, a middle-class marriage counselor in Louisville, Ky., who adores her husband and sings in the choir of the church where he preaches — until she’s possessed. by an ancient Nigerian devil known as Eshu. It was the kind of movie where the exorcist wears a whistle blower and a luxurious mustache, and where Satan’s playing field is under a disco ball.
Ms. Speed’s smile made her face twitch, an apparently sweet gesture that turned her into a twisted instrument for displays of lust and violent merriment. During one series, she alternated back and forth between embodying a distraught loving woman and a super-powered demon.
A few months after it was released on Christmas Day, DailyExpertNews called “Abby” one of the most financially successful B movies of its time. But after a lawsuit from Warner Bros. who accused it of stealing the plot of “The Exorcist” (1973), it was pulled from the cinema. Over the next few years, watching “Abby” became a rare and sought-after opportunity for fans.
Ms. Speed appeared in several other blaxploitation films, most notably “The Mack” (1973), a classic of the genre in which she played the pimp protagonist’s girlfriend and lead prostitute (played by Max Julien, who died this month). ). During the 1970s, Ms Speed also starred in other low-budget films and TV shows, including “Julia” and “Sanford and Son.”
“It seems like everywhere I go I get some kind of offer,” she told Jet magazine in 1973.
Ms. Speed appeared regularly in the black press of the time as a quoteable and photogenic celebrity. She was one of the “Bachelorettes ’72” in Ebony, and she was featured on the cover of Jet in July 1976, stating that she was “often characterized as a sex symbol.” A photo of her at a charity tennis tournament in 1975 appeared in Jet alongside photos of Bill Cosby and Aretha Franklin at the same event. Her 1980 semi-autobiographical novel, “Inside Black Hollywood,” was “outrageous” and became “the talk of the town,” according to Jet.
Carol Ann Bennett Stewart was born on March 14, 1945 in Bakersfield, California, to Cora Valrie Stewart and Freddie Lee Stewart. At San Jose City College, she staged a popular production of “The Bronx Is Next,” Sonia Sanchez’s play about black revolutionaries. She soon got a scholarship to study at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
Her career began at a casino in Reno, Nev., where she worked as a backing singer for pop star Bobbie Gentry.
Ms Speed’s real life had its share of blaxploitation-style drama. While filming “The Mack,” her boyfriend was fatally shot in Berkeley, California. Around that time, she was struggling to pay for her Hollywood Hills home; trying to support her son, Mark Speed; and throw another man out of her house. He went away, but he took many of Mrs. Speed’s belongings – even her bedspread.
After that, she was cast in the film for which she would become most famous. “Abby took me from California to a new adventure,” she said in an interview published on a website dedicated to William Girdler, the director of “Abby.”
Mrs. Speed leaves behind a sister, Barbara Morrison, and a grandson.
During the filming of “Abby,” said Ms. Speed, 99 tornadoes ripped through Louisville. A mansion where the cast had attended a lavish party was destroyed. When Mrs. Speed appeared on the set in her demonic outfit, the generator began to malfunction.
Maybe she played her part too well. Her colleagues were upset, Ms Speed said, adding, “The crew almost started to believe I was possessed by the powerful sex-crazed Eshu.”