Horror Elements: Spike Lee, Zaraah Abrahams and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

“We don’t think this is a horror film,” Spike Lee and lead Zaraah Abrahams greet me. I’m not so sure, but Spike Lee’s new film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a remake of Bill Gunn’s cult favorite Ganja and Hess, is a fascinating, violent, dreamy work nevertheless. It evokes both Gunn’s eccentric tone and themes of addiction, as well as European cinema, from lush ambiance to the sensuality and passion and stylized atmosphere of Jean Rollin. And so it wasn’t a stretch for Shock to sit down with the incomparable filmmaker and his Sweet Blood star (taking over for Marlene Clark as Ganja) and discuss the darker places their not-vampire film goes. 

In Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Dr. Hess Greene comes into the possession of an Ashanti blade. Stabbed with the artifact by his increasingly mad research partner Lafayette, Hess develops an addiction to blood, one he ultimately passes on in a vivid affair with Lafayette’s widow, Ganja.

Note: This interview includes revealing details about Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

Spike Lee: We don’t think this is a horror film. Is this a horror film?

Zaraah Abrahams: Not to me.

Lee: I think it has… what’s the word?

Abrahams: Elements.

Lee: Elements! [Laughs]

Shock Till You Drop: Doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it.

Lee: Oh, we’re gonna talk about it.

Shock: Why weren’t you interested in defining the characters as vampires?

Lee: Vampires are played out, tired.

Abrahams: I think that vampires are portrayed as fantastical characters and this film, there doesn’t seem to be anything fantastical about his hardship, about his journey, about how he’s getting through this. He doesn’t want to be this way, he wasn’t born this way, it’s not his intention to be this way. It’s something that he can’t help, and so the characters around him are so honest, that I think it makes it more about his addiction than a vampire movie.

Lee: Also, the original film Ganja and Hess, they weren’t vampires either. They’re addicts.

Shock: That’s true, they never define them as vampires. Do you think a horror film can’t take things like addiction seriously?

Lee: I try to stay out of labels, especially genre.

Abrahams: I know horror has been generalized, but what people find horrific is different. For me, I didn’t find anything really, in terms of the genre of horror, in this movie to tick the genre box.

Shock: Though you have a pretty intense, violent strangulation sequence yourself.

Abrahams: It is intense!

Lee: Whoa, so only scenes of intensity can be horror?

Shock: Not at all!

Abrahams: It was intense to shoot, and I guess for some, death is in the genre of horror.

Lee: [To Abrahams] What kind of preparation did you do for that scene?

Abrahams: It was very hard.

Lee: I know, closed set.

Abrahams: I just had to close myself off.

Lee: I’m not even talking about the sex part, I’m talking when you had to choke her. You were choking the shit out of her.

Abrahams: It’s awful to realize your own strength when you’re faced with “it’s them or me.”

Lee: I had to call cut or the actress would’ve been dead.

Shock: How do you as a filmmaker nurture that and help them come back from that place?

Lee: Number one, they have to feel safe. So, it was a closed set. Myself, [cinematographer] Daniel Patterson, we hung the mics. Actors, with stuff like that, if they don’t feel safe then they’re not going to give you what you want.

Abrahams: I think that Spike created an environment where we very close with the rest of the crew. Once “cut” was called, we connected with each other from when we had dinner together, or when we had drinks together, or rehearsal time. You felt like you were back with the people.

Lee: We were in Martha’s Vineyard shooting the film, for the majority of it.

Shock: So, secluded to begin with.

Lee: Yeah, the house is by itself.

Shock: Going back to intensity and ticking a genre box, your Martha’s Vineyard location recalls cult cinema, not only Ganja and Hess.

Lee: You had seen it though, right?

Shock: Absolutely. And there’s a dreaminess to Ganja and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus that also reminded me of Jean Rollin and Eurohorror and cult cinema. Especially the beautiful shot of them being intimate, with the doors of the house reflecting the beach.

Lee: Yeah, there’s a lot of European touches in the film.

Abrahams: I agree with that as well, and through the costume. I thought it was very chic, which is European.

Shock: Your walk through the field feels that way, as well.

Lee: With the billowing black cape [Laughs].

Abrahams: That last scene where he dies in my arms is my favorite scene.

Lee: That was intense. It was one take. She comes up the steps until we pull back and he’s dead in your arms and you see the cross swinging, that’s all one take, there’s no cut.

Shock: Hess talks about addiction in many respects in the film. Does their addiction to blood encompass all of that?

Lee: Yeah, it’s a metaphor for all the things he listed. Power, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, crystal meth, crack…

Abrahams: Each other, love.

Lee: Love’s an addiction?

Abrahams: Yeah, because you stick with it sometimes and it’s not good for you.

Shock: Do you think that’s what this film is about, as well?

Abrahams: For her, yeah. For me, yes. First of all, she’s attracted to something that’s not love, and then something about him ignites that in her. Although she knows at this point she’s been through so much, she should walk away, she can’t.

Shock: In the final moments, I could only think of “Ganja’s gotta take care of Ganja.” She couldn’t find the same relief. Even though you’re not interested in defining this film as such, are you an admirer of horror?

Lee: Yeah, one of the films I watched two weeks ago, a favorite of mine that’s a sleeper: Richard Attenborough’s Magic. Anthony Hopkins, Ann Margaret, Burgess Meredith. That’s a great film, scary too. They should bring that film out again. You should have an article on that film. That was overlooked when it came out, it still stands up.

Abrahams: Me, no. I don’t like scary films, I don’t like things that jump, I don’t like scary music, I don’t like scary adverts. Filming in Martha’s Vineyard, when the lights go out it’s dark. It did make me a bit paranoid, it did trickle into my paranoid state. I don’t like venturing into that.

Shock: What does it feel like to go to that place then in your performance?

Abrahams: Very difficult. I felt very vulnerable. I felt as though I really had to be open to Spike’s vision. Me, as Zaraah, I had to close that sense off. I really had to be open to what Spike saw and be naked, almost. Allow myself to be that frightened and that intense.

Shock: You fully Kickstarted the film. It seems the audience is there and the desire is there for Black filmmakers to make horror films.

Lee: Did you ever see a film I executive produced, Tales From the Hood?

Shock: Absolutely, one of my favorite anthologies. We’re not seeing that happen now.

Lee: Here’s the thing, if more Black films are made, you would see different types of Black films.

Shock: Is there a reticence to finance Black genre films?

Lee: I don’t know what it is. It’s hard to get funding no matter who you are, but if you’re African American, it makes it more difficult. Thing is, we as a people have enough money to finance the films ourselves. That’s what it’s gonna come down to, if we want to get it made.

Shock: Have you noticed a growing cult for Tales From the Hood?

Lee: People been mentioning it to me. A lot of people probably weren’t even alive when it came out and are discovering it. I haven’t seen that film in years.

Shock: Why Martha’s Vineyard?

Lee: I’ve had a house there for 28 years and it’s the most beautiful place on earth.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is in theaters and on demand February 13th. It is currently available to stream on Vimeo.

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