SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Edgar Soberon Torchia I have loved most of the Spike Lee joints I have seen, but this time I felt much disappointed with the remake of "Ganja & Hess". To start with I still do not fathom the cult following of the original: it is true that for its time it was an innovative approach to cinema dealing with paranormal activity, and quite different from most African-American motion pictures of the 1970s, but at the same time I found its central premise a bit pompous and wordy, and many viewers' reactions a bit exaggerated. The so admired "slickness" of both versions is too ornate for me, and quite distracting: it makes the plot look sillier than it is for all its pretension that we are witnessing an "awesome" psychological drama. I have to admit though that Bill Gunn had more control over his own material than Lee: the remake is amazingly disjointed and even longer than the original, with extensive stretches of "music videos" that could have been cut without affecting the drama. As a matter of fact Lee's film contains good elements that do no blend, as Bruce Hornsby's score and varied songs so omnipresent and badly dosed that the soundtrack becomes annoying, no matter how good the composition or the tune are. Then take the beautiful opening credits sequence or the great church scene featuring Valerie Simpson singing and playing the piano, mix them with the obligatory lesbian scene, the dispensable garden cocktail for white scholars, the unexplained trips to town (Hess must certainly be a hot specialist on the Ashanti culture, but we see little of that), the trivial little procession after the wedding... and you get something very bloody but hardly sweet. Your "cultural background" will not suffer much if you skip this.

Tadrick The last half hour of this film is so great and quite emotional that I wish the rest of the film had the same depth of feeling. The scenes in the baptist Church and the ending in the shadow of the Cross are Great work!!! (Look- there is Lee's signature dolly shot -backwards no less)The first half of the film leans towards coolness and detachment which seems to arise from the character of Hess and the Nantucket of the very rich. While there is a point to this, contrasting the orderly sterile lives of the wealthy with disorderly vibrant lives of every one else, it somehow works against the film a bit.One of the most memorable and haunting scenes for me is where Hess picks up the mother(possibly an addict already) on the park bench with her child. It is his confidence and wealth that make her powerless much like a vampire's trance. When Hess is leaving and he tickles the baby's chin, we see what he has done to the mother. Now she will be a different kind of addict! When he meets the mother and child again it is clear she has fed on her child to fulfill her need for blood.I'm not sure I parse it's meaning fully but it is definitely contrasting the old Ashanti culture's "addiction" to blood with Christian salvation by the blood of Jesus. Hess trades in his addiction for salvation by "Da sweet Blood", where as Ganja comes to embrace the old ways.I saw the original Ganja and Hess years ago and I have sometimes remembered it in the same way as I do another early 70's original, Let's scare Jessica to Death: as a one of a kind. Dreamy, haunting , regional, low budget and also a UNIQUE take on the vampire theme. I see it's now on DVD so I will be definitely check it out again.BTW people-I don't think Ganja and Hess is really a blaxploitation film.

John Seal This film has been slaughtered by the critics and IMDb voters, so maybe I'm just feeling the need to play Devil's Advocate - but I don't think so. A remake of Ganja and Hess, this is one of Spike Lee's most cinematic of films, carefully lensed, well scored (albeit with music that reminded me of Love, American Style - maybe that's the point), and intelligently acted. It's the antithesis, in fact, of his previous film, Red Hook Summer, which had its good points but ultimately looked like a student film. I found Da Sweet Blood of Jesus hugely entertaining and thoroughly engaging - and c'mon, how can you dislike a film dedicated to the memory of Christopher Lee, or one so clearly in debt to the works of Jean Rollin?

gavin6942 Dr. Hess Green becomes cursed by a mysterious ancient African artifact and is overwhelmed with a new-found thirst for blood.Spike Lee has made a very strange film here. Maybe because it was based on another film that happens to be rather strange ("Ganja and Hess") or maybe because it was filmed with a low budget and short on time, with relatively unknown actors... but there is something decidedly off about the picture.Like the original, there is an ongoing metaphor about addiction. The main character is not a vampire in the traditional sense, despite an unquenchable thirst for blood. He expresses that many (perhaps most) people have addictions... drugs, money, alcohol, women... his is just different.The Jesus parallel is played up from the original. There is indeed something strange about a man (Jesus) who asks his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Christians, of course, do not find it strange. And that makes the parallel interesting... why do we recoil at one man's thirst for blood and yet look forward to drinking blood each Sunday without thinking anything of it?