Ganja & Hess is an experimental horror film that was released in 1973. It is directed by Bill Gunn and stars Marlene Clark as Ganja Meda and Duane Jones as Dr. Hess Green. Bill Gunn was approached by an independent production company to make a “black vampire film” and although he didn’t want to make a black vampire film he accepted the project and used vampirism as a metaphor for addiction. James E. Hinton was responsible for the cinematography. This film is a particularly original mix of blaxploitation and horror, with an exquisite soul jazzy soundtrack accentuating the moody visuals. As a part of this exhibit, a link to the trailer for the movie is included as well as a few screenshots from the film and the faces of main characters. These are included in order to convey how Hinton’s cinematography brings the watcher extremely close to the characters and action.

This object belongs in an exhibit on “Black Radicalism” because it is rooted in rebellion and resistance. Bill Gunn originally didn’t want to go along with the making of this movie because he didn’t want to make another typical blaxploitation picture. So Gunn warped the movie into what he wanted it to be, pushing back against the producers who just wanted a “black vampire movie” and creating an “utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.” It belongs in an exhibit on “Black Radicalism” because it breaks the mold of typical 1970s blaxploitation cinema.

In order to connect this film to our class, I would like to draw the metaphor of Dr. Hess Green being the native intellectual who finds himself on the fringes of society after decolonization. Dr. Hess Green is a Black, wealthy doctor of anthropology and geology who is studying an ancient Black civilization of blood drinkers, who inhabited the fictional nation of Myrthia. After being stabbed, Dr. Hess realizes that he can no longer function in society as a regular citizen because he is now a vampire and therefore an outcast. Naturally, he then seeks companionship which he finds in Ganja and turns her into a vampire so that they can live forever. This idea of the native intellectual is presented in Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Dr. Hess Green is also comparable to James Baldwin in No Name in the Street in the idea of a person becoming a suit. Once Hess is transformed into a vampire, Dr. Hess Green is just a suit that he uses in order to function in society and find fresh victims. 

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/374280978/58f989451c