Disc Reviews

Ganja & Hess Review

• 6th Feb 2015

In 1972 a cult success arrived at the cinema in the shape of Blacula (1972), a streetwise African-American orientated twist on the Dracula vampire films bringing the legend to present day Los Angeles. It was a big success and an interesting addition to the Blaxploitation series of films made in the early 70s. It was so well received that a sequel was made the following year, Scream Blacula, Scream. Success would not be so sweet for political African-American arthouse filmmaker Bill Gunn when he came to make Ganja & Hess the same year as the latter film. Gunn had some success as a writer for his screenplay to The Landlord in 1970. The story of Ganja & Hess opens with an archaeologist, Dr. Hess Green who becomes infected by an ancient dagger he comes across which carries a curse with it. He is stabbed three times (representing the three Holy spirits) and a short while later becomes a blood craving vampire (the word vampire however is never mentioned throughout the film). He continues to live with an air of respectability but soon his blood lust turns to murder. Hess murder’s his assistant who was also his good friend before falling in love with the murdered man’s beautiful widow, Ganja. Eventually the couple fall in love and in marrying her he is also committing her to an eternity as a blood sucker.

The film was, to say the least very poorly received on its limited release in the USA before being going to Cannes and becoming an arthouse fave. As learnt from the extra on the disc the film was shown at a screening in New York in front of about 70 people at a fleapit cinema. Most had walked out before the film had finished and the manner in which this was dealt with by the producer’s greatly upset Gunn. This virtually ended Gunn’s career and it would be a few years before he’d direct another film. Gunn was disgusted with this predominantly white audience in a film clearly targeting a black audience especially given that so many people walked out. Following this and a couple of other screenings the producers did not know what to do with the film. In the end it was decided by the distributors that it would be edited down, becoming a less than welcome grindhouse hit for the director. It was edited from 110 minutes to 78 minutes, touring the grindhouse circuit and later on a VHS tape while dropping the original title and re-titled among other titles as Blood Couple, Black Vampire, Double Possession, Vampires of Harlem and Blackout: The Moment of Terror.

As well as the director having a very limited career following his negative experience here, its two leads also had a limited foray into the horror genre. As well as appearing in the cult classic, Enter the Dragon the same year as Ganja & Hess, Marlene Clark who plays Ganja had also been in the Blaxploitation, Agatha Christie style very British gothic horror The Beast Must Die in 1974 while Duane Jones as Hess, the doctor vampire who dreams of Africa had previous to this played the African American character in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). This was not only a breakthrough horror film but was also important for having a black character where race was irrelevant to the part, despite what some film critics have written. Other than that Jones has appeared in very little else.

The film was lambasted in many quarters to the point that Bill Gunn no longer wanted to have any more to do with it, becoming very disappointed in the way it was received. He even accused the film industry and people in the USA of their institutional and cultural racism while the film had been well received at the Cannes Film Festival. Blacula, on the other hand received cult success and praise with its tongue-in-cheek approach to its subject while Ganja & Hess failed to get this. The blood in the film looks decidedly fake and ridiculous (as it often does in 70s films) but it is an amazingly dull film and I would argue not an important one (as opposed to say Charles Burnett’s 1978 arthouse African American film, Killer of Sheep), despite the Eureka! release trying to elevate it as such.The acting is flat with long scenes of meandering dialogue with good purpose but nothing in the way of dramatic delivery. However, it has to be acknowledged that this is not really a Blaxploitation film nor is it really a horror film, but definitely has elements of both and is clearly an art film with art pretentions, or should that be pretentiousness? Dull from beginning to end.

Chris Hick