'Ganja & Hess' is certainly not your average Halloween movie

It took me a few viewings to fully appreciate the 1973 cult critical darling Ganja & Hess. For one thing, it's hard to look past the crudity of the filmmaking -- and I don't mean crude as in offensive -- but it is an undeniably low budget affair with a less than totally coherent plot thread.

In fact, part of why I think Spike Lee's fairly faithful remake -- Da Sweet Blood of Jesus -- doesn't work is that the original's power has a lot to do with the context in which it was released.

The film was infamously financed off the heels of the success of Blacula -- a thoroughly silly blaxploitation horror flick which posits that a sophisticated, smooth black prince was infected with vampirism by a particularly racist interpretation of Dracula.

The moneymen behind this film expected a similarly violent but titillating horror film, but instead got a dreamlike, art film which is more of a meditation on African-American life circa 1973 than a genre movie.

That doesn't mean the movie doesn't have its unsettling moments. It's score is punctuated by a droning, eerie chant that is unnerving. And there are jarring moments of violence that are shocking for their cold, matter-of-fact presentation.

But I finally 'got' this movie, when I stopped trying to experience it like a normal narrative film, and just let it unfold the way I believe it was intended to. This is a film that climaxes with an almost real-time religious reverie where we see a complete emotional and spiritual rehabilitation of one of the lead characters, without any traditional dialogue whatsoever.

It instead uses a broad strokes interpretation of vampirism to explore the beauty of black bodies, the pains and pleasures of assimilation and the power of addiction, with blood being a stand-in for drugs, or whatever else you want to use as a substitute.

It's been rediscovered by critics -- after an initial rapturous response at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, the film was quickly yanked from theaters and dramatically re-cut into a more salacious product retitled Blood Couple -- and now its frequently listed as a seminal film of not just black film but all 1970s cinema.

That's high praise -- and as a die hard fan of that decade of movies -- the '70s are especially maddening as an African-American viewer. There are gems of the blaxploitation if you dig deep enough. Black Caesar, Across 110th Street and Coffy, for instance, are more complex than they appear to be. And then they are pure pleasure movies like Foxy Brown or Slaughter.

Of course, there are plenty of race-themed films that don't really belong in that genre but are genuine masterpieces like Paul Schrader's Blue Collar.

Very few, if any, black films were rivaling the reach that The Godfather or The French Connection had, and even if it had been properly distributed Ganja & Hess never would have. If anything, its closer in style and substance to the same year's Don't Look Now, where Nicolas Roeg also expertly mixed melancholy, sex and violence in a similarly tantalizing stew.

It's not going to be anyone's idea of a thrill ride, and it's languid, unorthodox structure will certainly try to patience of anyone looking for an accessible Halloween movie experience. But, I do think it can be rewarding viewing.

Some time capsule movies are off-putting and impossibly dated, while some do truly shine an illuminating light on times they were made and by extension the world we're living in now. Ganja & Hess, I believe is far more the latter than the former.

If nothing else, it's interesting -- not for the kids and not for people uncomfortable with indie cinema --- but interesting enough that I kept coming back to it until it finally won me over.