{"id":10455,"date":"2015-10-20T20:00:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T01:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=10455"},"modified":"2015-10-19T11:22:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T16:22:21","slug":"ganja-hess-1973-bill-gunn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/10455","title":{"rendered":"Ganja &#038; Hess (1973, Bill Gunn)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I dreamed you murdered me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bizarre movie.  Stumbly, natural dialogue.  Inexplicable character behavior and barely-explained story.  Trippy dissolves and music make you feel like the whole movie is a dream sequence.  I can&#8217;t tell if it&#8217;s artistic, indulgent, or (probably) both.<\/p>\n<p><em>Love this shot of saxophonist behind lamp, making it appear that he&#8217;s hitting a giant bong, a visual metaphor for this movie:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image15\/ganja1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>George Meda (director Gunn) meets Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones, star of <em>Night of the Living Dead<\/em>), and according to plot descriptions I&#8217;ve read elsewhere, turns him into a vampire, but I thought Hess was a vamp all along and that after trying to kill him with an ancient dagger, George shoots himself to death.  The shooting works out for Hess, who drinks George&#8217;s blood then throws him in the wine cellar.<\/p>\n<p><em>George suicide:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image15\/ganja2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Ganja:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image15\/ganja4.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>George&#8217;s widow (unbeknownst to her) Ganja (Marlene Clark of <em>Switchblade Sisters<\/em>) arrives later and makes herself right at home, seducing Hess and being abusive to his butler Archie (Leonard Jackson, title star of <em>Super Spook<\/em>).  Soon they get married (does she have to prove to anyone that her previous husband died?), he stabs her with the knife and they&#8217;re vampires together, and now I get it, the knife turns people into vampires?  Some sex and blood and nudity later, I think Hess gets a religious mania and maybe kills himself, leaving queen vampire Ganja to find new beaus and victims.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image15\/ganja3.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image15\/ganja5.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Too many sidetracks, like George telling a horrible story then ending up drunk in a tree, introducing Hess&#8217;s son who is then never seen again, and an energetic preacher.  But it gets credit for having a completely different feel than other vampire movies I&#8217;ve seen, even the similarly dreamy (but far more sleek and story-driven) <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/10221\">The Hunger<\/a><\/em>.  Gunn was a playwright and screenwriter, also made a never-released wife-swapping movie and a barely-released soap-opera satire.  Spike Lee is a fan, remade this as <em>Da Sweet Blood of Jesus<\/em> last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I dreamed you murdered me.&#8221; Bizarre movie. Stumbly, natural dialogue. Inexplicable character behavior and barely-explained story. Trippy dissolves and music make you feel like the whole movie is a dream sequence. I can&#8217;t tell if it&#8217;s artistic, indulgent, or (probably) both. Love this shot of saxophonist behind lamp, making it appear that he&#8217;s hitting a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,2005,186],"class_list":["post-10455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-bill-gunn","tag-vampires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10476,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10455\/revisions\/10476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}