Case Number 23964: Small Claims Court   Kino Lorber // 1973 //
113 Minutes // Rated R Reviewed by Appellate Judge Tom Becker //
June 12th, 2012  The Charge  Drinking blood is a very anti-
social act.  The Case  Ganja & Hess is many things, but here's
what it's not: it's not a horror movie. It's not a vampire
movie. It started out that way, as a cheap, quick,
Blaxploitation chiller, in the vein of Blacula, but
writer/director/actor Bill Gunn, improvising as he went along,
decided not to literally stick to the script.  What we end up
with is a film that's far more personally ambitious and
ambiguous than a vampire movie, an art film with all the
accompanying pretensions that that classification suggests. It
has elements of horror, but the fragmented approach to story and
heavy subtext -- the blood lust being a metaphor for addiction,
for instance -- make it seem more suited to a study than a
wintry night's viewing.  The basic story: Dr. Hess Green (Duane
Jones, Night of the Living Dead) is a prominent and wealthy