He always did rants and diatribes well - his long riff to a silent and caged Martin Sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW, his explanation of where Sicilians came from to an initially bemused and increasingly pissed Chris Walken in TRUE ROMANCE, his alternately angry and pleading rant to Kyle McLachlen in BLUE VELVET while that woman dances on the top of the car behind him...great scenes.
I watched a very very young Dennis Hopper recently in a very strange B&W early 1960s flick, NIGHT MONSTERS. Hopper plays a young sailor on shore leave who falls in love with a strange local girl who might (or might not) be a mermaid. It's filmed around Venice, California (where Hopper just pasesd away, and where I once spent a lot of time, so it was cool to see all the buildings I remember). There are some genuinely creepy dream sequences, a general and disturbing sense of foreboding, and a bizarre scene with some of the most double entendre dialog with two campy old guys imaginable. Very odd film, with a dream-like atmosphere that reminded me a lot of CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Worth checking out.
I'll miss Hopper, he was always worth watching. He was good in a lot of stuff, like RIVER's EDGE, RUMBLE FISH, COLORS, SPEED, even as the avenging Texas Ranger in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2.
A great Hopper quote:
I made a picture called Super Mario Bros. (1993), and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, "Dad, I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy "King Koopa" in "Super Mario Bros."?" and I said, "Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes", and he said, "Dad, I don't need shoes that badly".
RIP.