Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release of the 1973 Ganja & Hess. Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and the horror cinema, 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 (director Bill Gunn), endowing him with the blessing of immortality, and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood. When the assistant’s beautiful and outspoken wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes searching for her vanished husband, she and Hess form an unexpected partnership. Together, they explore just how much power there is in the blood.

Later recut and released in an inferior version, this edition represents the original release, restored by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The Film Foundation, and mastered in HD from a 35mm negative.

Described by David Walker & Tim Lucas in Video Watchdog as "One of the most literate, allegorical, and evasive of all horror films," and Indiewire as "A film that was ahead of its time when it was release in 1973, and, quite frankly, is still very much so today," Ganja & Hess will be released on UK dual format (Blu-ray and DVD) on 26th January 2014 by Eureka! Entertainment as part of the Eureka! Classics strand at the RRP of £15.99.

Featuring a brand new 1080p high-definition transfer and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, the release will have the following extras:

• Feature-length commentary with producer Chiz Schultz, lead actress Marlene Clark, cinematogropher James Hinton and composer Sam Waymon

• Select scene commentary with historian David Kalat

• The Blood of the Thing: film historian David Kalat leads an interview-based documentary about the film

• Gunn’s original screenplay available via DVD-Rom and BD-Rom

• Reversible sleeve

• 24-page booklet featuring a new essay by critic and author Kim Newman and a vintage letter written by Gunn to the New York Times, illustrated with archival images