Review of Mad Dog Morgan (1976) by Jason D — 29 Dec 2009

Mad Dog Morgan is the story of Irish bushranger Dan Morgan (played brilliantly by then-drugged up and completely unaware Dennis Hopper) who is unfairly put through a rigorous and painfully unfair justice system throughout Australia.

His only option is to embrace the villainy and become the mad animal people treat him as. Accompanied by his best friend (possibly the film industry's most famous aborigine, David Gulpilil), the two embark on a crime spree in the old west, Ozzie style! Mad Dog Morgan's crime sprees become so large in number and infamous, the lawmen are constantly made to look foolish and become desperate in their attempts to capture him.

These exploits of Mad Dog Morgan are fairly factual for the most part, and were kept hidden for many, many years by the Australian government, both for the notoriety and for the mistreatment of Morgan by the Australian lawmen.

The movie serves as an excellent exploitation film that embodies many characteristics unique to this sub-genre of film, namely its Australian heritage (as the country was just getting into the exploitation ring) and for its historical period piece background.

Dennis Hopper gives an amazing (and brilliantly insane) performance as Mad Dog, embodying the character in such a powerful way, many of the crew members on the film were understandably frightened of him.

The supporting cast, which includes other well-established Australian actors like Jack Thompson, John Hargreaves, and Michael Pate, also does a commendable job. Philippe Mora's off-the-wall, spastic direction led him to receive some justifiable notoriety, not to mention gave him a chance to direct a string of other nominal exploitation (mostly horror) films, like the Beast Within, the dreadful Howling 2, and the delightfully corny Howling 3.

One painful thing about this film is its ownership by Troma Studios, whose multiple releases of it show painfully rough, VHS quality transfers of the film. To further add fuel to the fire, the recently released documentary Not Quite Hollywood, about Aussie exploitation films, shows brilliantly looking clips of Mad Dog Morgan in glorious HD that make the movie look rather new.

I say it's time for Troma to sell the movie to another company that could do this great film justice.