Ganja & Hess: Blood Is Not Enough

Ganja & Hess is a fever-dream of a horror movie, strange and weirdly lovely despite all the bright red blood. Although it was released in 1973 and is about Black vampires, it should not be lumped in with the blaxploitation classic Blacula. Ganja & Hess about a man forced to wrestle quite literally with his inner demons, and the woman who wants to share his existence, but it is not quite the traditional vampire love-story we are used to seeing. 

Set in a world of affluence and privilege, the story unfolds into a moody, fragile version of reality that becomes a nightmare for those living–and dying– in it. The camera lingers on windswept fields of high grass and wildflowers, interrupted by bursts of sudden violence. Voiceovers provide fragmented exposition that is largely stream-of-consciousness. The mundane bleeds into the surreal as the characters navigate their increasingly fraught days. 

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Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead fame stars as Dr. Hess Green, a wealthy, sophisticated anthropologist whose research focuses on an ancient African culture of blood-drinking which he is unprepared to experience first-hand. Bill Gunn, who also directed, plays Hess’s jittery and dangerously unstable assistant George Meda, who sets the plot in motion when he attempts to murder Hess an turns him into the undead, instead. And Marlene Clark plays Ganja, Meda’s wife and Hess’s lover, a woman with absolute self-assurance, self-possession, and authority who knows how to get what she wants from the world. She becomes the center of attention almost as soon as she enters Hess’s domain in search of her missing husband. 

Despite the relative thinness of the character development, these are all complicated people. George is deeply troubled. Ganja is assertive, seductive, and domineering. Both stand in deliberate contrast to Hess’s cautious, observant reserve. The performances are at once studied and surprisingly natural. The dialogue hovers between conversation and soliloquy and seems almost unscripted at times, with digressive monologues about drugs and old hurts. They obscure as much about the characters as they reveal. 

Christian imagery is scattered throughout the film, starkly underscoring Hess’s tormented dreams of the African rituals and of the people he kills to sate his desire for fresh blood. Vampirism in Ganja & Hess is intimately tied to lust, and the symbols of faith seem to call out the sin.

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Ganja & Hess is a phantasmagorical vision of a vampire’s existence, full of blurred lines between what is happening and what is only imagined. There is suffering. There is a struggle to function. There is a search for something better than the lives the characters have. Thoughtful and oddly philosophical, with an enigmatic ending, it fully deserves its place in the vampire canon.