Mad Dog Morgan (1976)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Anthony L

  
  Mad Dog Morgan is a Troma film? Really? Actually after the scene where a mans head get blown up it was no surprise but don't expect a Lloyd Kaufman film, this is a very different kettle of fish. Not that it isn't a little mad though, Hopper makes sure of that with an intense… More
  Mad Dog Morgan is a Troma film? Really? Actually after the scene where a mans head get blown up it was no surprise but don't expect a Lloyd Kaufman film, this is a very different kettle of fish. Not that it isn't a little mad though, Hopper makes sure of that with an intense and compulsive performance. He was battling a few demons in real life though at the time and you can clearly see it on screen. I've never enjoyed a film so much with such bad acting in - although none of it is from Hopper. It's a see it to believe it film, a one off and brilliant at that. Philippe Mora is cool.

• Cassandra M

  
  Mad Dog Morgan is a real rarity, which is a great shame, because Philip Mora's film has much to recommend it and deserves much better than a dodgy cropped transfer on the Troma label. More a chronicle of the exploits of 'Mad Dog' Morgan, the bushranger who inspired Ned… More
  Mad Dog Morgan is a real rarity, which is a great shame, because Philip Mora's film has much to recommend it and deserves much better than a dodgy cropped transfer on the Troma label. More a chronicle of the exploits of 'Mad Dog' Morgan, the bushranger who inspired Ned Kelly, than a conventional narrative, it's a non-judgemental portrait of an inconsistent, unpredictable man ? after going to great lengths to deny he'll ever "be made a murderer," he then becomes one almost immediately when he drunkenly sets his gun off, wounding his host, and then hurrying off to kill the man that he himself has just sent after a doctor. It's very much a seventies film (in the best sense), with a sense of the violence of both the landscape and the people trying to eke a living from it, and it constantly surprises with neat little details such as the magistrate who doles out long sentences simply because there are still so many roads to build. Despite being made at the height of his drugs-and-booze lost period, Dennis Hopper gives a pretty good performance as the naïve and contradictory folk hero cum psychopath, even managing a fairly convincing Irish accent (I'm sure th Irish could find fault, but it never makes you cringe). There's an impressive supporting cast of familiar Aussie faces, not least Gulpilil as Morgan's beloved partner in crime and Frank Thring at his most superciliously unpleasant as the Superintendent: few actors could seem more natural when he and his social circle start casually divvying up Morgan's body parts in the final scene (the head for an anthropologist, the scrotum for the Superintendent's new tobacco pouch). Although not overly graphic, it's still fairly strong meat.

• Jason R

  
  Mad Dog Morgan would have been unwatchable had Dennis Hopper not been involved. He makes this movie interesting, scratch that! He makes the movie, period. The thing that got me with the film was that it is very uneven, I don't know if it was the copy I have but the editing in… More
  Mad Dog Morgan would have been unwatchable had Dennis Hopper not been involved. He makes this movie interesting, scratch that! He makes the movie, period. The thing that got me with the film was that it is very uneven, I don't know if it was the copy I have but the editing in the movie is terrible. The film showcases Hopper at a crazy moment in his life, where he was at his artistic peak as an actor, and fueled by alcohol and drugs he had all but become an outcast in Hollywood, and despite all this he gives one of his most memorable performances.

• Patrick D

  
  It's interesting and has merits. But essentially it's just Dennis Hopper fucking about for the duration of the film.