Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film Ganja & Hess is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.
Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant (director Bill Gunn), bestowing upon him the blessing of immortality... and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood. When the assistant’s beautiful and outspoken wife Ganja (Marlene Clark, Switchblade Sisters) comes searching for her missing husband, she and Hess form an unexpected partnership. Together, they explore just how much power blood holds.
A landmark of Black cinema, Ganja & Hess—released just a year after the breakthrough film Blacula—reshaped what a “vampire film” could be. Long overlooked, the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2024 and is now celebrated for its provocative look at addiction and desire, while its influence echoes through contemporary filmmakers, like Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, and Spike Lee’s remake Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.
Freaky Fridays ticket prices include a free popcorn and soda or lemonade for all attendees! Alcohol can be purchased at Eden Bar. Regular food service will not be available for Freaky Friday events. So, come early, and fuel up outside for the night ahead!
1973, 113 minutes, USA, In English & French, Directed by Bill Gunn, Rated R
“If I were white, I would probably be called “fresh and different.” If I were European, “Ganja and Hess” might be “that little film you must see” Because I am black, I do not even deserve the pride that one American feels for another when he discovers that a fellow countryman's film has been selected as the only American film to be shown during “Critic's Week” at the Cannes Film Festival. Not one white critic from any of the major, newspapers even mentioned it.”
– Bill Gunn, DIRECTOR (May 13, 1973, The New York Times)
“Hired to crank out a Blacula knock-off (with a drug-joke title), Gunn instead wrote a surreal love triangle among black sophisticates, devoid of sex-machine phoniness, and directed it in a muttered, disorienting style, with a strange brew of Afro-Euro symbolism.”
– Nick Pinkerton, THE VILLAGE VOICE
“Gunn is determined to overthrow all systems, including those which shape how we think about race, construct images, and tell stories. As Ganja & Hess so eloquently demonstrates, before new things can be said, new ways of representing must be found.”
– Brad Stevens, SIGHT AND SOUND
“If Shaft is Barry White and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is the Sex Pistols, then Ganja & Hess is John Cage.”
– Jaime N. Christley, SLANT
“Less campy B-movie and more Ingmar Bergman or David Lynch, with a plot that’s deliberately enigmatic and driven by poetic symbolism.”
– Jarrison Sherrod, CINE-FILE
