Incluvie Classics - 'Ganja & Hess'
'Ganja & Hess' is a 1973 experimental horror film, written and directed by the visionary auteur Bill Gunn. It was meant to be a straightforward blaxploitation film – but director Gunn had grander ambitions.

A writer, who wants to make a film about today's Chile, departs from the usual forms of filming to grasp the mystery of things. He approaches the desired film, in the middle of a relationship crisis, caused by Marcy, a disturbing woman-child who drags him into a fascinating crazy-love relationship. And because the writer understands that true creation involves detaching himself from any subjection to the practical world and accepting the catastrophic as a form of secular holiness, he performs, in the end, an act of immense generosity.
'Ganja & Hess' is a 1973 experimental horror film, written and directed by the visionary auteur Bill Gunn. It was meant to be a straightforward blaxploitation film – but director Gunn had grander ambitions.
Treated like a granter of wishes for those earning out of retelling the same tragedy, Marilyn looks like she's caged in different stages of trauma for us to stare at, instead of someone we’ve finally allowed to rest in peace.
It only seems to prove that when the company had their backs against the wall and needed an all pleasing, generic movie that had to make up for The Last Jedi, they chose to sacrifice almost everything that made their main protagonist interesting and that made her stand out as the strong female character that a generation of young movie goers was supposed to look up to. Instead, we were left with a Rey that was so much less than she could have been. And I guess that’s the real story of Rey and The Rise of Skywalker; they could have been so much more, but they were just more of the same.
Praising Black representation and condemning the power structures that suppress it, a mother delivers an impassioned speech to her distant son.
Despite the film’s efforts to reframe its heroine with modern complexity, a certain emotional distance lingers.
“It's not ghosts. It's not supernatural. It's... It's America. And it's everywhere.”