Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

A poetic meditation on destructive patterns of desire, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus finds Spike Lee repurposing elements of Bill Gunn’s unclassifiable Ganja & Hess (1973) for something unique. Gunn’s obscure vampire variation maintains a legacy rooted in arthouse experimentation rather than the Blaxploitation-friendly, pseudo-Blacula (1972) effort it was commissioned to be. It stars Night of the Living Dead (1968) actor Duane Jones as an intellectual who becomes infected with a bloodlust after he’s stabbed with an ancient African dagger. Gunn used the material to critique the assimilation of African Americans into white culture, which reflected his upbringing as a gay Black man in white middle-class surroundings. Despite hewing close to Gunn’s original narrative, Lee’s approach has similar but distinct concerns, even while he keeps the broad strokes of Gunn’s story intact. Both feature Black characters at odds with life in America, plagued by Christian guilt, and pulled by their African heritage, yet each explores these themes in staggeringly different aesthetic terms.

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