Blood Couple: Ganja & Hess(1973)

Hello everyone it’s been awhile since my last write up. I decided to return with a very rarely talked about film that even though was released during the blaxploitation era, it gets lumped in with that era of films, but let me tell you after watching it, It’s far from anything that was released back at that or anytime for that matter.

I knew of the movie solely because of star Duane Jones who is best known for his iconic role of Ben in George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead but other than that I knew nothing about it, after watching the Shudder Original Documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror(A Must See BTW)

I finally decided too give it a watch and I must admit It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before directed by Bill Gunn and Stars Jones as Dr. Hess Green who has a friend George played by Gunn himself stay at his house for a few days. Gunn plays a very eccentric character who is obsessed with suicide and after stabbing Hess with an ancient knife, he finally kills himself in turn is when Hess comes too and drinks his blood.

One thing about this movie is that the concept of vampires are portrayed very different that other vampire films and is more based around the ancient African culture being passed long the bloodlines.

This is a very odd but interesting movie. majority of the film takes place at Hess home which adds too the film.

Duane Jones is really good in this movie and is the complete opposite of his Ben character as Hess realizes what exactly he is and goes out one prey on people a few times throughout the movie, one of his victims includes a new mother.

Marlene Clark plays Ganja wife of George who according to Ganja has been missing for some days and she decides to go too the last place she knew he would be at Hess house. Clark does a great job in her role when first introduced is a very arrogant and rude in her first introduction of Hess she thinks he is Dr. Green’s butler and treats him as such.

I haven’t seen anything else really with her but she is very good here and in for a good majority of the film she carries it and for me doing this time in the movie is where things begin to get weird as Hess & Ganja fall in love and he turns her into a “Vampire”.

I must say going into this movie I wasn’t expecting too much from it but as It got going, there are some things that works very well and a few things that could have been done better and the ending somewhat leaves you confused but all in all Duane Jones and Marlene Clark have good chemistry and Bill Gunn makes a good little black art film that should be viewed atleast once.