A quick history lesson - pioneering black filmmaker/writer/playwright Bill Gunn directed and wrote Ganja & Hess in 1973. When it opened to dismal results in New York later that year, Kelly-Jordan Enterprises, the film's distributor, yanked the film from the market and solid it to Heritage, who re-cut it to cash in on the booming blaxploitation craze of the time (and destroying the original negative in the process). After Fima Noveck had re-cut the movie, it was re-released as Blood Couple almost a half an hour of footage missing, re-dubbed dialogue, and a bad synthesizer score. All Day Entertainment initially restored Bill Gunn's original cut of the film for their DVD release years back (there were two versions, both now long out of print, the later restored with an additional three minutes), and Kino steps up to the plate and brings it to Blu-ray, newly restored in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation from the original surviving elements.

OK, so with that condensed history lesson (courtesy of the informative extra features from where this info was gleamed, but more on that later) out of the way, what's the deal with the movie?

Duane Jones (of Night Of The Living Dead) is Dr. Hess Green. Hess is an archaeologist who is taking care of business at an excavation project wherein he and his team hope to uncover the surviving artifacts of Myrthia, a long dead civilization. Things take a bad turn when Hess' assistant, George (writer/director Bill Gunn), stabs him with a bejeweled dagger and then kills himself. Oddly enough, when Hess awakens after the assault, he finds that not only are his wounds completely healed, but he's now obsessed with human blood.

He soon figures out that the knife his former assistant used to stab him was contaminated with vampiric germs and because they've mixed with his own blood, he's now essentially become a vampire (though he's ok with sunlight). When Hess meets up with a beautiful woman named Ganja (Marlene Clark of Switchblade Sisters), the wife of his late partner, she soon falls for him. Though at first it seems that they can be happy together, she doesn't know yet about Hess' condition or about the way that her husband died - and when she does find out, things might get a little more complicated...

Those looking for a caped blood sucker film would do best to stick with the Hammer of Universal vampire films, as Ganja & Hess plays more like an acid soaked head trip than an actual gothic horror film. There's a whole lot of metaphorical action going on contrasting African and Christian ceremony and the film can be a tad alienating if you don't pay close attention. If you do though, you'll find you're rewarded by some fantastic cinematography that makes this film (shot for roughly $300,000) seem like a much more lavish production than it is, as well as an atypical but interesting and intelligent story. By intertwining themes of vampirism with the more spiritual side of the film, Gunn creates a film like no other, the scene where Hess approaches a church standing out as particularly poignant in this regard.

Anybody who was impressed with Jones' turn in Night Of The Living Dead will find him equally impressive in his turn here, with Clark his equal throughout the film. The two have a great on-screen chemistry together and Gunn's film takes full advantage of that. There's believability to the more passionate moments that they share on camera that goes a long way towards making certain scenes far more intense than they would be otherwise, and both performers deserve top marks for their efforts here. James Hinton's cinematography is unusually artsy for a black seventies film and it gives the film a feeling of dread but is at the same time often very pretty, bending the line between reality and hallucination rather deftly. It's all set to an eerie score which mixes up tribal chants (reflecting Hess' obsession with his work) and electronic bits (giving the film a modern slant) and utilizing some interesting stings any time the film approaches vampiric horror. This makes for an interesting contrast in both themes and visuals that makes Ganja & Hess a worthy cinematic oddity that deserves to be rediscovered after such a convoluted history. And it has. The film has, in recent years (thanks in no small part to the All Day Entertainment DVD issues), found a sizeable following in both art film and cult film circles. A wholly original film and one that only starts to really make sense after a few viewings, Ganja & Hess is strange, fascinating, horrifying and beautiful all at the same time and definitely one well worth seeing.

Video:

Ganja & Hess arrives on Blu-ray in a very good in 1.66.1 widescreen by way of the AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer. The film is as grainy looking as it ever has been but the higher bit rate and higher resolution ensures that we see a lot more detail than was possible on the previous DVD releases. Texture is also much improved as are black levels and color reproduction. This is still a low budget picture that looks a bit rough around the edges but the high definition restoration seen on this disc is a big improvement. Gunn's use of color in the film is very important and those trippy, dreamy sequences involving different hues are brought to life beautifully here. Some mild print damage shows up now and again and some shots definitely look softer than others (stemming back to the original photography no doubt) but overall fans of the film should be quite pleased with the presentation.