A cerebral allegory on black identity in a horror film? Even though it got a standing ovation at Cannes, the independent producers were appalled when they hired playwright/director Bill Gunn to make a blaxsploitation horror film a la BLACULA and he turned in a cerebral allegory on black identity. They cut about 40 minutes and released it in the U.S. as BLOOD COUPLE where it sank without a trace. Gunn's original vision remained "lost" until recently but because the negative was cut, the MoA had to reconstruct the film from various 35mm prints and it's now being appreciated as an artistically innovative contribution to black cinema's history.
The story, such as it is, is slight: wealthy anthropologist Hess Green's unstable assistant stabs him with an ancient African sacrificial knife and he becomes a "vampire", although not in the traditional sense; there's no fangs and the good doctor can go out in the daylight and even attend church. He satisfies his craving for blood by killing pimps, hookers, and stealing plasma bags but complications arise when Ganja, his late assistant's avaricious wife, arrives at Hess' mansion looking for her husband. She and Hess bond despite her finding her husband's body in the freezer and Ganja & Hess soon marry. Hess "turns" her and, finally finding redemption in love, wants them to stand in the shadow of the Cross (the only thing that can kill "vampires") but because of the life she's had, Ganja actually prefers her new one and has no intention of giving it up.
Culture clash, assimilation, colonialism, "Uncle Tom", pagan African religion vs the Baptist church, and "the new black woman" all come into play in what's basically the antithesis of "blaxsploitation" but because I've never lived the "black experience", I didn't connect with all of it (if anything, I saw feminism with Ganja reversing what happens to Lot's wife in Sodom). That said, one would have to be blind not to see there's a lot bubbling just beneath the surface and like Masaki Kobayashi's KAIDAN, I was carried along by the film's visual style even if the tale was rather slow-moving and not as horrific as I'd like. Still, the film stayed in my mind for a couple of days after watching it. Spike Lee remade it as DA SWEET BLOOD OF Jesus.