My Bloody Valentine: Ganja & Hess

February is the Month of Love, but what is love?

It has many manifestations and its definition can vary greatly from person to person…for better or for worse. In the world of horror, no being embodies these complexities and contradictions more than the vampire. They symbolize romance, passion, primal desire, and eternal devotion, but also violent obsession, insatiable hunger, and the need to fully possess the objects of their affection. 

On this Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the prototype, the greatest Black vampire love story ever told: director Bill Gunn’s groundbreaking 1973 classic, Ganja & Hess.

The cerebral, haunting film follows Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones, of Night of the Living Dead fame), an anthropologist who becomes a vampire after his possessed assistant stabs him with a cursed dagger. Later, Green begins an intense affair with the man’s beautiful wife, Ganja Meda (Marlene Clark), who eventually finds out what he really is.

Gunn employs unconventional narrative devices, such as surreal dream-like sequences, and nonlinear storytelling, an approach that was critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful. The frustrated producers pulled Ganja & Hess from distribution and sold it to another company, who edited the film into a drastically re-cut version of itself titled Blood Couple. Through a partnership with the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, the original was eventually restored for re-release. 

Today, Ganja & Hess is widely recognized as both a Black cult classic and a landmark of American cinema. In 2024, it was selected to be preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, reserved for movies deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".