Ganja & Hess: The Complete Edition

 

 

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I had heard of this movie for so many years, first as a kid reading "Famous Monsters," then as a film buff who kept hearing and reading tales of a complex and challenging vampire film that the distributors wouldn't release. I was thrilled when I got my hands on this DVD. I must say I've liked my share of oddball, offbeat films that few others seem to connect with, and it was with that spirit that I went into "Ganja and Hess." Sadly, despite what "art" some see in it, "Ganja and Hess" is a total mess and a waste of time. It's execution is amaturish and it's plot is hopelessly muddled (except of course if you view plot as something that just interferes with the artist making his point). You could call this the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" of blaxploitation films, but that would be an insult to "Plan 9" and suggest that "Ganja and Hess" is fun in a bad movie sort of way. It's not. It's just bad. I get the idea that Ben Gunn has some sort of point to make, but by the time he gets around to making it, you're so numb you just don't care anymore. If you're looking for a good vampire film from the "blaxploitation" period, "Blacula" is coming to DVD soon. And if you're looking for art, look elsewhere. You won't find it here.

Warning: "Ganja and Hess" is not your traditional, cliched vampire film. In fact, there's little about this haunting, confusing movie that IS in any way ordinary -- it's a fragmented, weird movie painted in a surreal palette. Director/writer/actor Bill Gun crams this strange movie with feverish visions and Christian symbolism, and while it frequently doesn't make sense it's still hypnotic.

Anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (Jones) had been ancient civilization of Myrthia, and upon returning home he hangs out with his unbalanced research assistant George. Then George goes insane, stabs him with an ancient bone knife, and then kills himself. But Hess doesn't die -- he immediately heals and develops a craving for blood.

Enter Ganja (Marlene Clark), George's beautiful wife. She and Hess fall madly in love and happily stays with him as the new mistress of his house... and then, of course, she finds out his dirty little secret, as well as her hubby's body. What is ahead for Ganja and Hess, and how long can a vampire live with his own conscience?

By the usual standards, "Ganja and Hess" is a failure -- there's no linear storytelling, no "hero" or "villain" characters, it doesn't explain anything, and I didn't know what was going on for pretty much the first half of the movie (seriously, who's the masked white guy?). Presumably that's why the idiot producers of this movie chopped it up and redistributed it as a wildly different movie.

But even though it's slow, choppy and often confusing, "Ganja and Hess" is absolutely hypnotic. Bill Gunn's hazy, feverish, slow-moving direction leaves you feeling like you're on a magnificent drug trip, drifting through the increasingly chaotic life of cultured "vampires." And the growing sense of horror in this movie is kept subtle, such as when Hess kills a young prostitute for her blood while her baby cries in his crib.

And at the same time, he deftly folds in fragments of African culture, powerful Christian belief (specifically, the blood of Christ vs. the bloodlust), and drug addiction (Hess's craving for blood is like a junkie's).

But the movie would collapse like a house of cards if it weren't for Duane Jones and Marlene Clark. Both of them give absolutely stunning performances that carry the film through from start to finish. Clark is brilliantly feisty and strong-willed as Ganja, and she's so beautiful that you can't look away; Jones gives a spellbinding performance as a man torn between his primal bloodlust and his conscience.

"Ganja and Hess" is not for people who are looking for another "Twilight" -- it's an arty, befuddling movie that still manages to suck you in. Pun intended.

Gunn's film is definitely rough around the edges but mainly due to budget limitations; overall it is impressively shot, very oblique and definitely won't satisfy many blaxploitation or vampire film fans (unless they're also into art movies, which many are...so hey, give it a try).

Imagine if Godard had fooled some producers into giving him the funds to make a black vampire exploitation flick and then made a surreal film-essay on class and race: then you might start to get an idea of just how unusual Ganja and Hess really is (and how far it is from the kitschy fun of Blacula).

Gunn was (is?) an author and playwright loosely connected to the Black Art 'Umbra' movement of the 60s.

BTW the end of the film includes some amazing, cinema verite footage of a gospel performance in a Harlem church that is simply wonderful (apparently Gunn's lead actor just walked in and they shot the scene without most of those in the church realizing it was for a film).

The upper class party sequence (how often do you see that in a black film?) also features a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by the highly regarded author William Gaddis.

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