A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Search This Blog

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973)

Marlene Clark in Ganja & Hess

Cast: Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn, Sam L. Waymon, Leonard Jackson, Candece Tarpley, Richard Harrow, John Hoffmeister, Betty Barney, Mabel King. Betsy Thurman, Tommy Lane, Tara Fields. Screenplay: Bill Gunn. Cinematography: James E. Hinton. Production design: Tom H. John. Film editing: Victor Kanefsky. Music: Sam L. Waymon. 

Bill Gunn's astonishing Ganja & Hess is a deconstruction of both the vampire legend and Christian mythography posing as a horror movie. It focuses on the common element of both: blood. And it does it so effectively that perhaps its most chilling scene comes at the end of the film: children singing the hymn "There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood." Made on a small budget, Gunn's film premiered at Cannes to an enthusiastic reception, but failed at the American box office and was pulled from distribution except for a radically recut version called Blood Couple that Gunn had his name removed from. Spike Lee attempted a remake in 2014 called Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, but it lacks the rawness and authenticity of the original. I can think of no other "vampire movie" that has a comparable effect except perhaps Ryan Coogler's Sinners (2025).  

Posted by
Links: , ,