Before he made The Beast Within and Howling II, Philipe Mora made this movie about Dan Morgan, who roamed the New South Wales bush under a revolving door of aliases, including Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack.

Dan Morgan didn’t just walk through the New South Wales bush; he haunted it. Operating under a revolving door of aliases like Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack, he was less a man with a grudge and more a one-man insurgency against the Crown.

By August 1863, the authorities had reached their breaking point after Morgan plugged police magistrate Henry Baylis during a high-stakes shootout. As his rap sheet grew longer and his methods bloodier, the government placed a bounty on his head that eventually ballooned to £1,000, which was a fortune at the time. By March 1865, he was officially declared an outlaw under the Felons Apprehension Act, making him “fair game” for any citizen with a rifle.

His reign of terror ended abruptly a month later at Peechelba Station in Victoria. While Morgan was busy holding up the homestead, a stockman crept through the shadows and shot him in the back.

History has painted Morgan as a Mad Dog, a bloodthirsty, erratic lunatic who probably didn’t need much of a reason to pull the trigger. But here’s the thing that makes for a great movie: despite being a total headcase, he was a wizard in the woods. His bushcraft skills and horsemanship were legendary and he had a network of sympathizers who kept him hidden from the law for two years. He was a folk hero to some and a monster to others, which is exactly why he fits right in here.

Based on the book Morgan: The Bold Bushranger by Margaret Frances Carnegie, the film drips with authenticity. Carnegie actually assisted Mora in scouting the real-life locations where Morgan’s crimes took place, lending the movie a haunting, topographical realism.

The narrative kicks off with Dan Morgan (played with unhinged intensity by Dennis Hopper) witnessing a horrific massacre of Chinese immigrants on the goldfields. This trauma, followed by a brutal prison sentence where he is victimized and broken, serves as the catalyst for his transformation. He doesn’t just decide to rob people; he decides to declare war on a world that offered him no mercy.

If the onscreen performance feels volatile, it’s because the offscreen reality was just as chaotic. Dennis Hopper was at the height of his lost years, fueled by substances and a total commitment to the role.

At teh end of the shoot, Mora claims that Hopper lived up to being, well, Dennis Hopper: “Rode off in costume, poured a bottle of O.P. rum into the real Morgan’s grave in front of my mother Mirka Mora, drank one himself, got arrested and deported the next day, with a blood-alcohol reading that said he should have been clinically dead, according to the judge studying his alcohol tests.”

You can watch this on Tubi.