Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

mario-217-690269 There was a time when film was slower. Shots were longer and cuts were considered an interruption. Ganja and Hess is of this era. Before you say anything, realize that image means a lot in cinema. Just the amazing imagery and in-depth account of black life without the white gaze make this an important film. The rich world of Dr. Hess unfolds with African connections, the church, and the street all make for a pioneering film with complete disdain for established norms. As a student of black cinema this along with Bush Mama and Killer of Sheep are simply must sees. For the second wave see Daughters of the dust, Dead presidents and Sankofa. While it is no night of the living dead it is an import stop in the history of the horror genre.

Michael_Elliott Ganja & Hess (1973)** 1/2 (out of 4) Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is stabbed with an ancient dagger, which transforms him into a vampire always in need of blood. After the suicide of his assistant, the man's wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes to the home and soon she and Hess have a strange relationship building. Legend has it that director Bill Gunn was hired to turn in a blaxploitation film like BLACULA but instead he came back to the producers with this bizarre, surreal art-house film and it pretty much destroyed his career. The studio cut the film down to 78-minutes to try and make it sell-able but I was able to see the uncut 110-minute version. This is a hard film to judge because there's no question that it comes up well short of being a good movie but at the same time you really have to respect Gunn for trying to do something artistic and not just deliver some sort of drive-in trash that would have played at four in the morning. Of course, by doing a picture like this its appeal is going to be very limited but even though the flaws I think there's quite a bit of stuff to enjoy here. There's no question that Gunn has created a wonderfully dark atmosphere. This can be seen from the opening shots to the closing one. Gunn, who also wrote the screenplay, wants to make sure you never fully understand what's going on. Bits of dialogue flow that seem to have nothing to do with the film. We get scenes shot so strangely that you're more focused on how they were shot instead of what's going on. We even get a few additional characters that pop into the story and other strange bits like a wedding scene and a drawn out sequence inside a church. If you're expecting blood and horror elements you're going to be disappointed because both of those things are very small and don't have much of an impact on the film. The visual look is something very impressive as the cinematography really adds to the atmosphere. The way the film is edited is another major plus. Then we have the two lead performances. It's somewhat shocking to see that this was Jones first film since the release of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD five years earlier. I always wondered if his wonderful performance in Romero's classic was just a fluke but after seeing this film it obviously wasn't and it's a real shame that he didn't appear in more movies. Jones is extremely good in the part of the haunted doctor and it's one of those performances that requires very little dialogue. You can tell what emotions the doctor is going through just by looking into the eyes of Jones. I was really surprised at how well he could play this haunted soul but he pulls it off. Clark is also extremely good in her part able to play the overbearing witch but also the alternate moments of her character. GANJA & HESS is a really odd little movie and it's not going to appeal to most but if you enjoy weird and different bits of work then you might find it interesting.

bates-mt In the history of Black cinema, Bill Gun's movie is certainly a bizarre oddity. It doesn't fit at all with the Blaxploitation films of the same period, nor is it in any conventional sense a horror film. It does address many recognizable aspects of Black culture (or, it might be more accurate to say, the "pop" culture version of it): the Baptist church, the gaudily-dressed pimp, the blonde-wigged whore, the gun play, the jive talk, the mystical back-to-Africa mythological hokum. However, its visual style owes more to Bergman (Hour of the Wolf) and Argento than to Van Peebles and others. This is a film about the corruptions and decadence of the Black bourgeoisie; before most folks even knew there was one. But this isn't the Cosby Show. Doomed from the outset--not because it doesn't have a striking visual style, it does--but because it failed to offer audiences, Black and White, the view of Black culture they crave, even today; the Black culture even Spike Lee invariably provides on cue. For this reason, a groundbreaking movie, and one worth another look and further re-evaluation. It has more than a hint of the Dorian Gray, of the knowingly camp, about it. Gunn makes it hard to tell how seriously to take the religious imagery and symbolism. If, however, a White director had made the scenes in the Black church--the behavior of the congregation as outlandishly over-the-top and "insane" as anything in the Dr. Hess household--he or she would surely have been accused of being racist. Gunn himself plays against Blaxploitation type: a somewhat effete intellectual, almost certainly homosexual, whose violence is ultimately entirely self-directed. The image of Black masculinity as vulnerably exposed, and painfully so, is perhaps more honestly revealed here than in any other "Black" film. Compared with this, even Lee only pussyfoots around the issue.

batlash I think this movie made my eyes bleed. This is a perfect example of bad "art" movies. Dull, incoherent, pedestrian direction, mediocre acting, clueless editing, blind cinematography, and almost certainly no writing (this thing surely couldn't have been scripted). Perhaps Bill Gunn should have made the standard blaxploitation vampire movie he was hired to make. It certainly couldn't have been any worse.