Dennis Hopper (1936-2010); actor, writer, director, painter, photographer and chemical aficionado, was one of the purest rebels the Hollywood system ever encountered. A friend of James Dean and John Wayne, his insolence and dedication to Method Acting nearly destroyed his career before it was started. Almost wilfully he would follow up commercial success with abstruse cinema designed to isolate his audience. A manic pariah for most of the Seventies, dragged out to play the unstable madman in a few independent movies, he resurrected his career in the mid-Eighties and would become recognised as a serious artist in the last decade of his life.

EASY RIDER || MAD DOG MORGAN
BLUE VELVET|| COLORS

DIR: DENNIS HOPPER
US 1969 94mins 35mm
Using the proceeds of a drug deal, Wyatt and Billy are two free spirited hippies on bikes searching for the American Dream. Along the way they see the changing face of their country and confront their own limitations, while indulging in all the counterculture has to offer. Hopper’s directorial debut single-handedly ushered in New Hollywood with its rock soundtrack, fluid photography and visceral editing. One of the most important films of the decade, it catapulted Hopper into Hollywood’s A-list and proved impossible for him (or co-star Peter Fonda) to follow.

WINNER Best First Work Cannes Film Festival 1969
Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

DIR: PHILIPPE MORA
AUSTRALIA 1976 99mins 35mm
Using the locations where 19th century bushranger Dan Morgan had been active, this low budget, semi-amateur slice of Australian New Wave sets out to capture the griminess and madness of Australia’s past. Hopper, allegedly drinking rum by the litre at the time, is the Irish migrant Morgan fighting against the colonial lawmen in an Australian take on the Western genre. Able support from David Gulpilil and Jack Thompson, who lectured Hopper on the cultural importance of bushrangers before the film began. Print Courtesy of National Film and Sound Archive, Kodak Atlab Collection

DIR: DAVID LYNCH
US 1986 120mins 35mm
Jeffrey Beaumont’s discovery of a severed ear leads him into a perverse underworld of sadomasochism, kidnapping and all-round small-town strangeness as only Lynch could conjure. Hopper’s career reviving portrayal of the sociopathic Frank Booth, wired on amyl nitrate and violently confusing pleasure and pain overshadows Kyle MacLachlan’s lead and the tragically beautiful Isabella Rossellini, to create one of the most terrifying villains to ever crawl out of suburbia and onto the cinema screen. Most disturbing of all is Hopper’s assertion to Lynch that he was Frank Booth.

Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

DIR: DENNIS HOPPER
US 1988 120mins 4K
Volatile adrenaline junkie Danny McGavin jumps headfirst into the LAPD gang department and finds himself as much in conflict with his veteran partner Bob Hodges as with the gang members he’s surrounded by. A series of random events leads to an escalating gang war, and McGavin’s own recklessness endangers all their lives. Hopper’s return to Hollywood introduced the iconography of the LA gang scene to a global audience, along with a perfect role for Sean Penn in his twofisted youth, and gave Ice-T his first mainstream exposure.

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