Top Ten Dennis Hopper Movies Review

Now starring in the TV version of Crash on Starz, Dennis Hopper has had a long and varied career as an actor, beginning with his film debut as "Goon" in Rebel Without a Cause. Although he has done some crap films for the easy money, and descended into self-parody in commercials for the NFL and retirement funds, the man known as "Dennis the Menace" is never, ever dull. At his best, he is mesmerizing, as in the films listed below:  

1. Blue Velvet (1986): Hopper plays one of the screen's all-time great psychos, Frank Booth, in a pull-out-all-the-stops performance that is alternately hilarious and terrifying. Whether brutalizing Isabella Rossellini or weeping at Dean Stockwell lip-synching to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," he is brilliantly over-the-top in director David Lynch's neo-noir masterpiece. MGM Home Video.

2. Out of the Blue (1980): Old pal Paul Lewis hired Hopper to direct and star in this crazed drama about an extremely dysfunctional family at a time when Dennis was otherwise unemployable. Hopper took the bare bones of the plot, rewrote the script, and created savage art. The film begins with his character driving his semi into a schoolbus full of children, and takes off from there. The apocalyptic flipside to Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. With Linda Manz, Sharon Farrell, and Raymond Burr. Available on DVD from Madacy Records, or better yet, seek out the out-of-print edition from Starz/Anchor Bay.

3. Easy Rider (1969): Hopper directs and stars as Billy opposite Peter Fonda's Captain America. After selling a large quantity of cocaine to Phil Spector, the two head off in search of America. Unfortunately for them, they find it. With a screenplay by the great Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), and a killer sountrack featuring Steppenwolf, the Byrds, and The Band, among others. Available on DVD from Sony Home Entertainment.

4.Der Amerikanische Freund a/k/a The American Friend (1977): Dennis gives a subtle, understated performance as Tom Ripley in Wim Wenders's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game. Of course, subtlety and understatement are not exactly the first words that come to mind when discussing Hopper's work, but this is nonetheless one of his best performances. With Bruno Ganz. Available seperately or as part of The Wim Wenders Collectionfrom Starz/Anchor Bay Home Video.

5. The Last Movie (1971): After Easy Rider, Dennis was given carte blanche to make his next film, and promptly blew his newfound cachet with this brilliant, self-indulgent mess of a motion picture. After shooting a million feet of film in South America, a drug-addled Hopper retreated to Taos, New Mexico to edit the movie. After assembling the definitive version, he engaged in a bit of self-sabotage by recutting the film to make a non-linear narrative full of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and Brechtian alienation. The studio hated it, and buried the film, although it did win Best Picture at the Venice Film Festival.

6. The Glory Stompers (1968): Hopper stars as Chino, the perpetually stoned leader of the Black Souls Motorcycle Club, who kidnaps a pretty young thing (Chris Noel) after laying a beat-down on her boyfriend (Jody McCrea). Hopper's performance is not to be missed, and the dialogue is priceless: "Here's the situation, baby. Like we accidentally snuffed out your old man. Now the only way out for me and my people is to either snuff you out, or to sell you, to some high-class Mexican friends of ours. Now, being good people, we decided to sell you." With Casey Kasem and Jock Mahoney.

7. Tracks (1976) and Apocalypse Now (1979): Two decidedly different takes on the Viet Nam war. In writer/director Henry Jaglom's Tracks, Hopper plays Jack, a Nam vet accompanying the body of his best friend to their hometown via train. His naked emotionalism and improvisational genius have rarely had such a showcase. In Francis Ford Coppola's epic re-imagining of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Dennis plays the harlequin figure, a whacked-out American photojournalist uner the sway of Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz. Brando refused to work with Hopper on the set, in part because Dennis was out of his mind, and partly because, in an attempt to get in character, he hadn't bathed in weeks. Both films available on DVD from Paramount Home Video. 

8. Rumble Fish (1983) and Hoosiers (1986): In the '80s, Hopper made a great comeback as a character actor, proving particularly adept at playing damaged, alcoholic dads, as in these two films. In Coppola's stylized adaptation of S.E. Hinton's Rumble Fish, Hopper is father to Matt Dillon's Rusty and Mickey Roarke's Motorcycle Boy (Universal Home Entertainment), while in Hoosiers, he picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Shooter, a haunted, broken man dragged out of the gutter by Gene Hackman to become assistant coach of the high school basketball team (MGM Home Video).

9. River's Edge (1986): 1986 was a great year for Dennis Hopper, as he came back from the grave to become a sought-after character actor, with Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, and this dark tale of disaffected teens (not to mention his role in Texas Chasinsaw Massacre 2). Here he plays "Feck," the one-legged drug dealer who harbors dead-eyed fugitive John (Daniel Roebuck), before realizing that the kid is a remorseless killer. Bleak, but rewarding, and based on a true story. MGM Home Video. 

10. Speed (1994) and Waterworld (1996): Hopper reunited with his River's Edge co-star Keanu Reeves for director Jan DeBont's Speed, a relentless action picture that unfortunately helped to typecast him in psycho roles (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment). One such role was the maniacal, one-eyed villain in Kevin Costner's bloated epic Waterworld. Costner left some of Dennis's best work on the cutting room floor, as his own bland performance as the urine-drinking hero paled next to that of the flamboyant heavy. For Hopper completists (and masochists), a new, expanded 3-disc special edition has just been released, which restores some of those scenes. (Universal Home Entertainment)

Honorable Mention:

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Giant (1956)

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

From Hell to Texas (1958)

Night Tide (1961)

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

The Trip (1967)

Kid Blue (1973)

Mad Dog Morgan (1975)

The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Texas Chasinsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Straight to Hell (1987)

Chattahoochee (1989)

Paris Trout (1991)

The Indian Runner (1991)

Red Rock West (1992)

True Romance (1993)

Witch Hunt (1994)

Basquiat (1996)

Land of the Dead (2005)

Hell Ride (2008)