- Directed by Bill Gunn, Lawrence Jordan
- Written by Bill Gun
- Stars Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEM9oEKC1Ow
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
An interesting film of the time, but it’s very slow. It’s dated, but not in a very interesting way. There’s a strong cast and unique director choices, but overall we didn’t find it very entertaining.
Synopsis
We are told that Doctor Hess Green, an anthropologist, was stabbed by a stranger three times. The dagger was infected, and he could not be killed. Credits roll.
We begin in a church. Reverend Luther Williams narrates that he likes his job and his people like him. He also works as a part-time chauffeur for Dr. Hess Green. He explains that Hess is an addict, but he’s not a criminal; he’s a victim; addicted to blood.
Jack Sargent welcomes Dr. Green into the building. George Meda will be his new assistant. Green and Meda talk over dinner; they talk about hunger. Soon, we get a dreamy sequence that includes Sargent and Meda wearing silver masks and a bunch of tribal people walking in Africa. Dr. Green was just having a dream. Meda’s up in a tree, drunk, and sorta suicidal. Green doesn’t want to deal with the police, so he talks Meda down.
Later that night, Meda goes berserk and stabs Green with an old bone dagger. Then he writes a letter with some pretentious-sounding stuff in it. He then takes a bath, points a revolver at himself, and pulls the trigger. Elsewhere, Hess Green wakes up, unharmed. He finds Meda’s body and licks up all the blood.
Later, we see Green stealing blood from the blood bank, in broad daylight. There’s a garden party, and Green’s nephew Enrico comes for a visit. Green goes to a bar, and a hooker comes over to earn some easy money. They go to her place, and her pimp comes out of nowhere to fight with Green. Green leaves, well-fed.
Before long, Meda’s wife, Ganja, calls looking for him; she’s not happy. She says George must have gone crazy again. Her hotel is canceled after her trip to Amsterdam, so she asks to come and stay with him until George turns up. She’s cranky and ill-mannered.
Before long, they’re having sex. He starts feeling hungry and runs away to hide in the attic with a glass of blood. She eventually finds him there and joins him for more sexy-time. The next morning, she’s got all kinds of demands for Archie the butler, and she’s already bringing up the topic of marriage.
Later that day, Green goes into the city and has a bite. Meanwhile, Ganja needs some wine and goes into the wine cellar to find some. Instead, she finds her dead husband in the freezer. When he gets home, she reveals, “I just couldn’t fix dinner. I know you killed my husband.” A bit later, she tells a childhood story about a snowball fight. Not long after, the two get married.
He mentions that he wants her to live forever. “You’re into horror movies. I can dig it,” she replies. They talk in bed and then do other things, and the next thing you know, she’s dead and bloody. But she doesn’t stay that way. The next morning when she wakes up, she’s not sure what happened. “I dreamed you murdered me.” He gives her a glass of blood. and she finally gets it.
The pair invite Richard, a guy from the community center, to come over for dinner. She has sex with Richard, and then she scratches his back and licks the blood off. He doesn’t survive the night. They dump his body in a field, and she doesn’t really take it very well. They read in a book that the cross can kill them and want to learn more.
Reverend Williams is running the church service as usual. He talks about not letting evil in the front doors of the place. He asks if anyone wants to be prayed for, and Hess Green walks up to the altar. They pray for him and sing, and he smiles as he walks back out again. He then goes home and has Ganja move a light bulb to put him in the shadow of the cross. He asks Ganja to “come with me.” He falls down, dead.
Ganja looks at the cross and considers what she wants to do. Instead of dying, she calls an ambulance for Hess. She looks out the window and sees Richard jumping over Archie’s dead body.
Commentary
It’s a strange film. We’re told in the opening text that Hess Green was stabbed with a dagger and became a vampire. We then spend the next 25 minutes watching that happen. Why tell us that it happened and_ then_ show it happening? We had assumed he was already a vampire at the film’s start. This part is really boring, as George Meda babbles and mumbles about nonsense for far too long.
It picks up a bit in the second part, after Hess Green has actually become a vampire. The Ganja vs. Archie rivalry bits are funny. Hess and Ganja only kill a couple of people before he figures out how to end his problem, so he’s not particularly evil, just cursed.
The highly-modulated African chanting gets really annoying after a while. It was really pretty racy and sexy for the early 70s, but I found it tedious and really boring; it could have done with a lot of editing. This is a highly-regarded vampire film, and I will admit, it’s unusual and has a unique style to it, but it’s just so awfully dated and slow that it’s hard to sit through.