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One of my all time favorites.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

After being stabbed with an ancient, germ-infested knife, a doctor's assistant finds himself with an insatiable desire for blood.One thing I really liked about this movie: This film contains the only other lead role for Duane Jones, best known for starring in "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). But that may be about the extent of it.Dave Alexander says the film "eschewed the conventions of both the blaxploitation movie and the vampire story." He is right about that, as the blaxploitation elements are completely missing and the vampire story exists to draw parallels with religion (particularly Catholicism) and addiction. Alexander also points out the "feverish experimental soundtrack", which sounds overall positive to me. What I heard was very repetitive "music" that got increasingly annoying.

After being stabbed with a ceremonial dagger but finding himself unable to die, a man tries to control his insatiable blood-lust while keeping himself safe from his new wife who grows curious about his strange activities.This is a truly abysmal effort that has very little elements that are enjoyable and wasn't all that entertaining at all. The main thing with this is that nothing happens at all in here and it's an endless repeat of boring blather about nothing in particular or endless looping of an admittedly-catchy tribal song and not much else, as the film's barely-there plot unfolds in such a confusing, mystifying manner that there's almost no way to ensure what's going on at all. That just makes the film seem endlessly long and excruciatingly boring, since we don't have anything to really get a grasp on at all beyond the few decent moments of eroticism and sensuality present in their romance with each other. That mostly comes along during the final half which is where the few moments of enjoyment come from with the final revelation of the curse forcing this into some decent areas, but overall, this one just isn't all that worthwhile.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Nudity, strong sexual content and drug use.

Ganja & Hess (1973)** 1/2 (out of 4) Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is stabbed with an ancient dagger, which transforms him into a vampire always in need of blood. After the suicide of his assistant, the man's wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes to the home and soon she and Hess have a strange relationship building. Legend has it that director Bill Gunn was hired to turn in a blaxploitation film like BLACULA but instead he came back to the producers with this bizarre, surreal art-house film and it pretty much destroyed his career. The studio cut the film down to 78-minutes to try and make it sell-able but I was able to see the uncut 110-minute version. This is a hard film to judge because there's no question that it comes up well short of being a good movie but at the same time you really have to respect Gunn for trying to do something artistic and not just deliver some sort of drive-in trash that would have played at four in the morning. Of course, by doing a picture like this its appeal is going to be very limited but even though the flaws I think there's quite a bit of stuff to enjoy here. There's no question that Gunn has created a wonderfully dark atmosphere. This can be seen from the opening shots to the closing one. Gunn, who also wrote the screenplay, wants to make sure you never fully understand what's going on. Bits of dialogue flow that seem to have nothing to do with the film. We get scenes shot so strangely that you're more focused on how they were shot instead of what's going on. We even get a few additional characters that pop into the story and other strange bits like a wedding scene and a drawn out sequence inside a church. If you're expecting blood and horror elements you're going to be disappointed because both of those things are very small and don't have much of an impact on the film. The visual look is something very impressive as the cinematography really adds to the atmosphere. The way the film is edited is another major plus. Then we have the two lead performances. It's somewhat shocking to see that this was Jones first film since the release of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD five years earlier. I always wondered if his wonderful performance in Romero's classic was just a fluke but after seeing this film it obviously wasn't and it's a real shame that he didn't appear in more movies. Jones is extremely good in the part of the haunted doctor and it's one of those performances that requires very little dialogue. You can tell what emotions the doctor is going through just by looking into the eyes of Jones. I was really surprised at how well he could play this haunted soul but he pulls it off. Clark is also extremely good in her part able to play the overbearing witch but also the alternate moments of her character. GANJA & HESS is a really odd little movie and it's not going to appeal to most but if you enjoy weird and different bits of work then you might find it interesting.

I've never seen the full, unexpurgated version of "Ganja and Hess" as director Bill Gunn intended it to be viewed. However, since a handful of other reviewers have mentioned the little-seen edited version, I thought I'd offer my thoughts on it. I remember when Duane Jones's obituary appeared in "Fangoria" magazine in January 1989. I was a huge "Night of the Living Dead" fan and his passing came as a shock to me. The people at "Fango" gave him a beautiful, deeply respectful send-off; the article contained an interview with Jones (a rarity in itself) as well as a discussion of his other horror film roles, the most prominent of which was in "Ganja and Hess". I had never heard of this film prior to reading the article (which also mentioned that the movie could be found on video under various alternate titles, including "Blood Couple" and "Black Vampire"), but it sounded intriguing and I kept an eye out for it. Just about a year later, I found a brand new VHS copy of "Blood Couple" at the supermarket, of all places. Before I comment on the film itself, let me say that I fully understand why Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, and company did not care for "Blood Couple". Reading about the uncut "Ganja and Hess", it's obvious that "Couple" was a savage edit of Gunn's labor of love, and at times it doesn't make sense even on its own terms as an 83-minute exploitation flick. But by the same token, it contains quite a bit of footage that went unused in "Ganja and Hess", and there are plenty of frightening, gut-wrenching moments. In those dim, distant years before rare films found new life on DVD, it was nice to see Gunn's movie in any form. In "Blood Couple", the murder of Dr. Hess Green (Jones) by his assistant George Meda (Gunn) takes place during the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film. This is followed by the harrowing scene of Green's resurrection, Meda's suicide, and Green's terrible realization that he is now addicted to human blood. The next scene, which is almost as disturbing, shows a desperate, tearful Hess Green reciting a prayer and then attempting to kill himself, too--but he cannot. He was rendered immortal when Meda stabbed him with the ancient Myrthian "dagger" (actually a piece of wood, sharpened at the end and containing bits of human bone). He will not die unless the shadow of a cross touches his heart, which is mentioned--but not clearly explained--in a brief song on the film's soundtrack. This is where things start to get a little fuzzy. Apparently, a curse was visited upon the Myrthians that they should live forever unless they were touched by the shadow of a cross...but, as the song says, "Christ had not come yet and the cross did not exist", so the Myrthians were doomed to hundreds of years of existence as blood addicts. But who cursed them? And how did this unnamed person know that Christ ever *would* come? I guess it's silly to expect too many answers from a sliced-and-diced exploitation movie. Hess Green's son is nowhere to be found in "Blood Couple", and Ganja (Marlene Clark) apparently dies along with her new husband in the film's grim conclusion. Gunn's direction and dialogue are often self-consciously artsy, and when he stumbles, he stumbles rather badly (mostly in the early scenes featuring Green and Meda). In my opinion, however, Gunn scores more hits than misses even in this edited version of his film. From the moment "Blood Couple" begins, there is a pervasive mood of unease and doom; you *know* that terrible things are going to happen. That kind of mood is very difficult to achieve, judging from all the stacks of lousy horror movies out there, and that's why I give this film an 8.