Pop’s Cult Theater: Ganja & Hess + Sinners

Pop’s Cult Theater is here! Every month, we’ll be curating a double feature featuring flicks that are a little bit weird, a little bit different, and a whole lot of kickass.

For our February installment, we’re celebrating Black History Month with a horrifying, blood-sucking double feature: GANJA & HESS (1973) and SINNERS (2025)

In our first film, we’re taking a look at the foundational Black art-horror flick, Ganja & Hess. Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film Ganja & Hess is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant, bestowing upon him the blessing of immortality… and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood. When the assistant’s beautiful and outspoken wife Ganja comes searching for her missing husband, she and Hess form an unexpected partnership. Together, they explore just how much power blood holds.

In our second film, we’re fast-forwarding to the modern day smash hit Sinners. In Ryan Coogler’s stone-cold modern vampiric masterpiece, twin brothers return to their Mississippi hometown to start again,rying to leave their troubled lives behind, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. Paced like a freight train and no less than a perfect summer blockbuster, Coogler’s flick is also a deeply complex take on music, culture, prejudice and both literal AND metaphorical blood-suckers. Sinners takes the reins from Gunn to create a vampire tale for a new generation.