Your appreciation of Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus will likely depend on whether you’re familiar with the movie Lee is remaking, Bill Gunn’s low-budget cult classic Ganja & Hess (1973). If you are, Lee’s remake is a must-see; if not, you should probably skip it. Lee follows the original so closely that Gunn, who died in 1989, gets cowriting credit. Jesus is so faithful to Ganja that Lee even replicates some of the original movie’s more amateurish qualities; the pacing goes slack on occasion, the sets are noticeably underdressed, and the acting is all over the map. This isn’t just a tribute to Gunn but a commentary on independent filmmaking today, though watching it without knowing its source material might feel like listening to one end of a conversation.
The impoverished style is no affectation, but rather a show of respect to Gunn, who had to make Ganja & Hess quickly and with minimal resources. The film was financed by Kelly/Jordan Enterprises, a low-rent production outfit that hoped to cash in on the recent success of Blacula (1972) by making another vampire movie for inner-city audiences. The project needed a writer and director, so producer Chiz Schultz suggested his friend Gunn, an accomplished stage and TV actor who’d recently won acclaim for writing Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970). Gunn balked at the offer initially, but after some consideration he began to view the project as a challenge; while delivering the lurid sex and violence the financiers expected, he would craft a personal art movie on the themes of religion and race relations.
Directed by Spike Lee
