Originally financed to capitalize on the success of Blacula in 1973, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess (1973) uses a distributor-mandated focus on vampires as the framework to make an elliptical, arthouse horror that threads together the many faces of the vampire myth (seducer, blasphemer, carrion creature) to make an inward-facing investigation of the perils and pressures of assimilation on Black people in America.
The plot is introduced through a trio of devices that lets us get used to the dreamlike nature of the film’s universe. Text title cards fill in the basic outline, while a gently crooning singer provides additional context. A voice-over completes the trio, speaking of the same events in the present tense, though we have yet to see them happen.
Wealthy anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is stabbed three times by his crazed and suicidal research assistant, George Meda (writer/director Bill Gunn). This attack with an ancient ceremonial dagger infects Hess with a disease that grants him both near immortality and a thirst for human blood. Soon after, Hess meets his former assistant’s wife, Ganja (Marlene Clark). Though Ganja is initially concerned about her missing husband, she soon joins Hess as his partner in marriage and vampirism. Read more
