Though it was suppressed by the commercial system, this key film by Bill Gunn became an underground classic. Ishmael Reed called it “one of the most beautiful and unusual films ever produced in the United States.” Filmed on location in Gunn’s beloved Hudson River Valley, it is a vampire tale that seems at once ancient and modern—a clash of African mythology, Western art, and fundamentalist Christianity. When Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones), a distinguished anthropologist and geologist, is stabbed by his assistant (played by Gunn) with an artifact from an ancient civilization, he becomes immortal, stricken with an unquenchable thirst for blood.