Friday Films: RIP Dennis Hopper

I meant to post this last week, so it's not exactly timely, but this video, from the DVD quarterly Wholphin, is how I'd like to remember Dennis Hopper. Sure, Easy Rider is an American classic and Apocalypse Now is a work of art...but this video, filmed in 1983, is Dennis Hopper strapping himself to the "Russian Suicide Chair" and igniting it. Here's a description by Hopper himself.

"You sit inside a circle of 20 sticks of dynamite. The explosion creates a vacuum, like the eye of a hurricane, inside. Dynamite won't blow in on itself. But if three in a row don't go off, you'll be sucked out and killed. Also, you can't raise your head above a certain level or it will be blown off. I asked a stunt daredevil named Ollie Anderson to set up my experience. I got into the middle and hoped like hell it worked. I had to hold my ears. I felt a little disoriented afterwards, but besides that I felt fine. I was alive."