Duane Jones Movies
Duane Jones spent much of his career actively promoting and participating in African-American theater companies as an actor and a director. The former English professor also directed the Maguire Theater at the Old-Westbury campus of New York State University and served as artistic director at the Richard Allen Center in NYC. As an actor, many will best remember Jones as the ill-fated hero in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and as an anthropologist-turned-vampire in Ganja and Hess (1973). Jones made his final film appearance in the 1989 horror feature To Die For. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The never ending battle between good and evil continues as history's most notorious bloodsucker turns up in modern day Los Angeles in director Deran Sarafian's updating of Bram Stoker's timeless tale of terror. He may have a new look and a new life, but when Vlad Tepish arrives on Los Angeles in search of his one true love, an old nemesis vows to put an end to his horrific reign of terror once and for all. With love and death on a collision course that could signal the end of history's greatest villain, the stage is set for a battle that will pit the eternal devotion of a monster against the determination of the man sworn to destroy him. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brendan Hughes, Sydney Walsh, (more)
- 1989
- R
This classy diptych of campus-based horror tales overcomes its limited budget with imaginative writing and some fairly effective supernatural setpieces. The first installment, "Fright House," involves a devil-worshipping psychiatrist (Jennifer DeLora) performing ritual human sacrifices on a college campus, then disguising the deaths as suicides. After losing his partner while investigating the house where many of the deaths took place, a police detective (Julien Paul Borghese) is granted supernatural aid by the house's former owner. The second tale, "Abadon," is a stylish twist on the vampire formula about a college professor (Jackie James) who continues her late husband's experiments in immortality, unaware that she has unleashed an ageless energy-vampire who begins preying on her students. Her work attracts the interest of a mysterious stranger (Night of the Living Dead's Duane Jones), who has some interesting theories of his own -- and who turns out to be a vampire himself. Munsters fans will be impressed by the stylings of top-billed Al Lewis as a sinister police chief in the first installment. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Duane Jones, Jackie James, (more)
Jon Chardiet plays a Puerto Rican youth who targets subway walls for his graffiti renderings. For a while, it looks as though Chardiet's problems will carry the plotline, but before long the film's true raison d'etre comes to the surface. Rap-music deejay Guy Davis, in tandem with such like-minded individuals as music student Rae Dawn Chong, endeavor to stage a huge breakdancing presentation, featuring several musical artistes of the period. Harry Belafonte served as coproducer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, (more)
- 1982
Losing Ground is a amusing but standard menage a trois, set in a small college town. The principle difference between this and other such films is that all the characters are African-American. Artist Bill Gunn is married to philosophy professor Seret Scott. She prides herself on being broad-minded and liberal; so why is she so peeved that Gunn is using the gorgeous Maritza Rivera as his model? Although there are no star names, and though it might be well nigh impossible to find, Losing Ground is well worth your while. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A scientist stricken with an insatiable hunger for blood dominates this strikingly atmospheric drama. Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones), a wealthy and respected African-American anthropologist, is assigned a new assistant, an intelligent but unstable man named George Meda (Bill Gunn). One drunken night, George stabs Hess with a dagger from the ancient African tribe of Myrthia and then kills himself. The Myrthians were cursed with a thirst for human blood, and, by the time George's wife, Ganja (Marlene Clark), comes looking for him, Hess has developed a similar addiction to blood. Hess and Ganja fall in love, and they soon marry, but Hess infects his new bride with the Myrthian curse, which gives them eternal life, but at a terrible price. Actor, playwright, and novelist Bill Gunn was hired to write and direct a low-budget black vampire movie, but instead he delivered a thoughtful, impressionistic film that uses addiction to blood as a metaphor for African-American cultural and spiritual identity (and never once uses the word "vampire"). Ganja and Hess proved too deliberately paced and self-consciously surreal for the producers, who chopped it to 83 minutes, removed Sam Waymon's superb musical score, and retitled it Blood Couple. This mangled version was for many years the only one available, and it appeared under six different titles on home video before Bill Gunn's original version was restored for DVD release in 1998. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
When unexpected radiation raises the dead, a microcosm of Average America has to battle flesh-eating zombies in George A. Romero's landmark cheapie horror film. Siblings Johnny (Russ Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) whine and pout their way through a graveside visit in a small Pennsylvania town, but it all takes a turn for the worse when a zombie kills Johnny. Barbara flees to an isolated farmhouse where a group of people are already holed up. Bickering and panic ensue as the group tries to figure out how best to escape, while hoards of undead converge on the house; news reports reveal that fire wards them off, while a local sheriff-led posse discovers that if you "kill the brain, you kill the ghoul." After a night of immolation and parricide, one survivor is left in the house.... Romero's grainy black-and-white cinematography and casting of locals emphasize the terror lurking in ordinary life; as in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), Romero's victims are not attacked because they did anything wrong, and the randomness makes the attacks all the more horrifying. Nothing holds the key to salvation, either, whether it's family, love, or law. Topping off the existential dread is Romero's then-extreme use of gore, as zombies nibble on limbs and viscera. Initially distributed by a Manhattan theater chain owner, Night, made for about 100,000 dollars, was dismissed as exploitation, but after a 1969 re-release, it began to attract favorable attention for scarily tapping into Vietnam-era uncertainty and nihilistic anxiety. By 1979, it had grossed over 12 million, inspired a cycle of apocalyptic splatter films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and set the standard for finding horror in the mundane. However cheesy the film may look, few horror movies reach a conclusion as desolately unsettling. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judith O'Dea, Russ Streiner, (more)
