In January 2010,  Dennis Hopper was diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, which was in an advanced state and had spread to his bones. At roughly the same time, I was lucky enough to view the documentary Not Quite Hollywood, a retrospective concerning Ozlpoitation fiilms, an intriguing and insightful doc concerning the Australian film industry and its bid for international recognition during the 70s and 80s. This film brought to my attention a rather curious Dennis Hopper vehicle called Mad Dog Morgan. Said film was produced by Australian investors, with a B-movie director (Philippe Mora, who preceded to craft such cinematic abortions as Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch and Howling III), I wasn’t expecting much. To my surprise, Mad Dog Morgan delivered on all fronts. It functions as a comedy, a tragedy, an exploitation film, a period drama, a western, and finally (and most importantly) a work of art. It is truly a credit to Hopper’s skills as an actor that he rises above the source material he is given and creates a character both brutally violent and beautifully flawed and imperfect. Sadly, Mr. Hopper’s time grows short, and we begin to brace ourselves for the loss of a man who helped to define a generation.

Mad Dog Morgan is based on the true story of John Fuller (aka Dan Morgan), an Australian bushranger (the outback equivalent of the outlaw gunslingers that roamed the western United  States at the close of the 19th century), a fairly irredeemable individual who shot game and man with equal disregard, yet lived by a code whose particulars were known only to himself. He eventually met his end at the hands of police while trying to escape from the house of a family he had recently held hostage in 1864. The film paints a much more sympathetic picture of Morgan than his real world exploits do, yet one must remember while viewing the film that this is less a historical retelling than it is a dramatic character study, seeking to delve into the mind of a character that would rather reject civilization than continue to exist in the maelstrom of its hypocrisy.

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