Alicia I love this movie so much

SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

preppy-3 Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is stabbed four times with an infected knife. It doesn't kill him but leaves him with an insatiable taste for blood. He meets beautiful and strong Ganja (Marlene Clark) and falls in love with her. But can he love a woman with his blood lust? A disastrous, boring and just dreadful attempt to make an art horror film. I was "lucky" enough to see the 110 minute uncut version. I had trouble making it through! The film was made on a very low budget so it looks pretty bad. It also is constantly throwing African music and images in the viewers face (that's where Hess got infected). It's (somewhat) interesting at first but leads to nothing. The sound recording is muddled and the camera-work is so off that I couldn't figure out what I was watching at times. Conversations go on endlessly with no rhyme or reason. Most of them have nothing to do with the plot! This moves VERY slowly and the constant cutting to imagery and African music quickly gets annoying.Acting is no help. Jones (so good in "Night of the Living Dead") is terrible here. He takes forever just to finish one sentence and acts like he's on drugs most of the time. Clark plays Ganja as a foul-mouthed obnoxious woman. I couldn't stand her at all and couldn't figure out WHY Hess loved her! Director Bill Gunn complained that people didn't "get" what he was doing with this film. All he was doing was trying to mix two genres--horror and art--together and it never works. Most importantly this is never once scary or creepy. A sleep-inducing mess not worth your time. Ignore all the critics who are raving about it. They just see a film with virtually no plot and tons of pointless imagery and immediately decide it's an art film and a masterpiece. You know what? It isn't.

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.

lthseldy1 This movie was not all that great and one that I wouldn't recommend checking out if your a serious vampire flick fan. I thought that sense it had Duane jones staring as the main character that it would have at least a little potential in it but what i saw most of his acting was boring dialogue and not enough enthusiasm in his character. Jones gets stabbed by a man that later committed suicide and left jones a living vampire. Jones then sucks the blood of the man and keeps him in the freezer in fear that if he is caught that he will be found guilty of the man murder. Soon afterward we see visions of an African queen somehow in control of Jones and leads him to kill more and more people. Wee see Jones envisioning being at a church in order to free himself of this curse of being a vampire and his fate is left after that scene. The woman on the other hand is the wife of the man that committed suicide and ends up staying at jones place and finds her husbands body in the freezer and finds out that after she has fallen in love with Jones that there is more to this man than she cares to know about. Jones wants to make her immortal just as he is. This movie is unmemorable, slow and boring it tends to want to sway to fans of such movies as "Blacula" but falls to do so.

liddellr87 As I viewed this movie, I thought it was somewhat far out. However, the movie is entertaining and I must say somewhat ahead of it's time in cinema. The late actor Duane Jones was a stunningly, gorgeous man. His acting was impeccable. Duane Jones was also the main actor in the original horror movie "Night Of the Living Dead". The writing of the movie was good, though somewhat underdeveloped.The main actor and support actors add to the overall entertainment. This movie could have been classic mainstream horror, if it had been supported by increased cinematic budgeting. If you are a true horror fan, then this movie is a "gem in the ruff". Kudos! to late actor Duane Jones and the Writer of this movie for introducing classic horror on a budget. A must see!