Shaggy-Man Story

By J.C.

MAD DOG Directed and Written by PHILIPPE MORA

Knocking about the Australian outback around the middle of the past century was an Irishman, more than half-crazed, called Daniel Morgan. Paroled from prison after six years of "hard labor"--not to mention sodomization, humiliation and deprivation--Morgan roamed the country stealing horses and robbing their riders. His only companion was an aboriginal boy named Billy, who taught him how to use a boomerang and live off the land like a bushman. Eventually Morgan killed a couple of policemen, and a fat -L- 1,000 price was fixed on his head. By the time he ran up against the law for the last time, Morgan was working his way from highwayman to legend.

Rough Edges. This odd, disjointed Down Under western tries to duplicate the rough edges of a folk ballad, placing Morgan's exploits in a context that is both romantic and social. Much time is expended depicting the primitive qualities of colonial justice, while government authorities are depicted, predictably, as brutal lunatics. Superintendent Cobham of the Victorian police (played with flush, fruity menace by Frank Thring) supervises Morgan's eventual capture and execution, then ships his head to an anatomy professor in Melbourne. The professor has a curious theory--he thinks Morgan could be half ape. The superintendent keeps Morgan's scrotum as a souvenir for himself, believing it will make a good conversation piece and a practical tobacco pouch.

Dennis Hopper, in full woolly cry, does rather well as Morgan. The relationship between Morgan and the aborigine Billy is intriguing, and David Gulpilil (who appeared previously in Nicolas Roeg's excellent Walkabout) acts Billy with easeful understanding. The depth of their friendship, and all of its meaning, is shunted aside in favor of sharpening up the same dull point: civilized man is the true primitive, and out laws are ground down because they are creatures of pure, therefore intolerable freedom. The people who made this movie may have found a fresh scene in Australia, but what they really needed was a new theme. J.C.

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