Out of the Blue

Almost ten years after burning his Hollywood bridges with the disastrous The Last Movie (1971), Dennis Hopper was hired to star in a low-budget family drama opposite teen actor Linda Manz (Days of Heaven). When its director, Leonard Yakir, was fired, Hopper took over the reins, rewrote the screenplay and transformed it into this towering, far bleaker howl into the abyss. The story follows Cebe (Manz), an adolescent punk fan preparing for her alcoholic father (Hopper) to return from prison. Manz hardly acted again after this, but she is phenomenal as the troubled kid whose disillusion builds to a suitably nihilistic act of rebellious violence. Hopper, too, is a force of nature as the dad: diabolical and destructive, but not without some strange sympathy. Though the film never became a hit (it took four decades to find a proper home release in the UK), it set up Hopper for his 80s comeback - and it has aged better than his directorial debut, Easy Rider, whose DNA is present here in a heady extended sequence that takes runaway Cebe to the streets of Vancouver. With its tense long takes and chilly, impoverished backdrop, this is a disquieting and often very upsetting film, but one marked by its clear poetic honesty.