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| Images courtesy of Powerhouse Films |
Before French-Australian director Philippe Mora became synonymous
with B-horror ala The Howling sequels II and III as well as the
Christopher Walken starring alien abduction freakout Communion, the
filmmaker’s debut feature film the Australian true-crime western saga Mad
Dog Morgan set off a larger-than-life on/offscreen explosion in hiring
Dennis Hopper to play the titular role of the bearded gun-toting outlaw Dan
Morgan. Based on the nonfiction text Morgan:
The Bold Bushranger by Margaret Carnegie and adapted for the screen by
Mora, the scope 2.35:1 widescreen rugged western tapped into Hopper’s method
acting which included Hellraising with drugs and boozing to such a degree he
was kicked out of Australia. While
Hopper’s antics went unabated and carried over onto the set of Francis Ford
Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the film helped launch Mora’s fictional
filmmaking career in one of Australia’s rougher examples of the western with a
genuine madman as the titular antiheroic bushranger.
Dan Morgan (Dennis Hopper) bears witness to the horrific
slaughter of Chinese workers on Australia’s goldfields and after being
brutalized behind prison walls for six years including but not limited to
sexual assault by inmates, he finds his life redirected towards criminality
after being released on parole. Becoming
a bushranger and joining forces with an Aboriginal man named Billy (Walkabout
and The Right Stuff star David Gulpilil) who comes to his rescue and
becomes his right-hand partner in crime, the film becomes an Earthy desert
dusty western gunslinger in the outback featuring a spectacular Hopper whose whirlwind
energies left an unmistakable imprint on the overall picture. As Morgan’s infamy grows following numerous
robberies and a handful of murders along the way, his sworn mortal enemy
becomes Superintendent Francis Cobham (Frank Thring) who relentlessly pursues
Morgan across the outback trying to bring him down and an end to his crime
spree.
Inarguably still the best possible Philippe Mora film due in
large part to Dennis Hopper’s performance and troublemaking method-acting which
reportedly prompted David Gulpilil to go on a walkabout asking the trees about
his co-star’s antics, Mad Dog Morgan though ostensibly a covered wagon
period western is considered Ozploitation for its violence and sense of gritty
chaos unleashed across the widescreen.
Though a low-budget endeavor bearing the same narrative problems endemic
to Mora’s other pictures over the years including the WWII historical drama Death
of a Soldier, the film winds up working thanks to Hopper’s screen presence
and palpability in the role of the historic bushranger. Featuring a jarring yet wholly appropriate Didgeridoo
infused score by Patrick Flynn and featuring vast as well as intimate breathtaking
scope cinematography by A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon camera
operator Mike Molloy, the film from a technical end is solid. Mostly though, this is Hopper’s show and he
all but completely inhabits the character and allows himself to be seen in
lights both vulnerable and volatile.
Recently restored in 4K from the interpositive by Powerhouse
Films, presented in two cuts (103-minute director’s cut or 95 minute theatrical)
with the original mono track, Mad Dog Morgan a film which received mixed
critical reception but terrific box office returns comes to blu-ray disc via the
boutique releasing label Indicator who have released it in a limited boxed-set
edition as well as a standard release.
Nominated for two Australian Film Institute Awards and now regarded as
the pinnacle of Philippe Mora’s film directing career, the Indicator disc comes
stacked with extras including a retrospective interview featuring Dennis Hopper
and Philippe Mora as well as the 1976 short documentary To Shoot a Mad Dog. While not necessarily a masterwork of
storytelling, Hopper and Gulpilil make the much-disputed history of the crime
legend believable in one of the country’s still bloodiest and most violent
Australian westerns sure to leave a mark upon any and all who tread its rough
rural grounds.
--Andrew Kotwicki
