Ganja & Hess
Ganja & Hess is a 1973 film from the USA, directed by Bill Gunn, running 113 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic and blaxploitation.
- Year
- 1973 · 1970s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 113 min
- Director
- Bill Gunn
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (51/100)
- Also known as
- Blood Couple · Black Vampire · Double Possession
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic, Blaxploitation
An art film that was sold as a vampire picture. Recut and buried for decades.
An art film sold as a vampire picture, recut against its director's wishes and buried for decades before rediscovery. Bill Gunn uses a tale of an anthropologist infected with a blood addiction to make a dense, elliptical meditation on faith, assimilation and Black identity. It looks and moves like nothing else in the cycle.
The distributors wanted Blacula and got a genuine avant-garde work, which is why they chopped it. The restored version is a landmark of independent Black cinema. Spike Lee later remade it.
Not really exploitation at all, and one of the most important films tagged here.
Trailer
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Written about
- Blaxploitation, 1971 to 1975
Melvin Van Peebles caught gonorrhea on his own set, filed a workers' comp claim, and bought more film stock with the settlement. Four years later the studios had mined the audience out and moved on.
The cycle in depth
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
Filed alongside
Requiem for a Vampire
Rollin at his purest. Two women in clown costume, a castle, almost no dialogue.
J.D.'s Revenge
A dead 1940s gangster possesses a mild law student. Blaxploitation crossed with the supernatural.
Spider Baby
Jack Hill's first, Lon Chaney Jr's last good role. Very odd and very fond.
The Blood Beast Terror
Cushing called it the worst film he ever made. He was being generous.
The Curse of the Crying Woman
The Mexican gothic at its cobwebbed peak, Universal horror with the fog cranked up.
Sugar Hill
Revenge via Haitian zombies. The best of the blaxploitation horror crossovers.
The Brainiac
Not a Santo film. A forked-tongue demon eating brains with a spoon.
The Mack
Half drama, half documentary of 1970s Oakland. The real players are in it.
The Long Hair of Death
Margheriti and Barbara Steele do the burned-witch gothic, and the fog does half the acting.
Fascination
Rollin's best, and the one where the pretty dream logic finally grows teeth.
The Iron Rose
Rollin with the vampires stripped out, and his best film for it.
Abby
The blaxploitation Exorcist. A minister's wife is possessed by a sex demon. Warner Bros sued.