Billy Jack (1971)

Half-breed Vietnam-vet Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) lives on a Reservation protecting the natives, wild horses, and the peace-loving people. He confronts Posner and his men poaching wild mustangs for dog meat. Sheriff Cole brings back Barbara from Haight-Ashbury to her deputy father. She is beaten for getting pregnant from the free love. Cole asks Billy Jack to protect her at the native school from his deputy and the big man Posner. The school is home to every race run by Jean Roberts. The tension between the school and the locals grow until it boils over.In 'The Born Losers', Billy Jack is interesting but it's Elizabeth James who plays Vicky Barrington in her white bikini that is truly memorable. I don't know where she went although I doubt they could have worked the bikini into this movie. There is a lot of hippie ethics and a sympathetic depiction of native plight. Although for a hippie movie, there is plenty of violence. The philosophizing can be conflicting. The dialog is often rambling. The acting is terribly amateurish. Its heart is mostly in the right place but it's a bit of a mess.

BILLY JACK is the quintessential '70s film detailing the hippie movement and depicting their struggles against small-town narrow mindedness and bigotry in the American south. Tom Laughlin, who directs as well as stars as the eponymous hero (he's playing the character in the second of five films here, although the last remains unreleased), is in many ways an early version of Rambo in FIRST BLOOD, a highly skilled loner who just wants to be left alone. Unfortunately, as in FIRST BLOOD, the corrupt authorities have other ideas, and that's where the film comes in.I'm no fan of political polemics in films. I believe they have their place, and that place is not being thrust down your throat in a piece of entertainment. Sadly, a lot of the running time of this overlong film is spent in depicting the hippie movement in a positive light, which in essence means lots of preaching, lots of happy-clappy nonsense and plenty of amateur theatre. BILLY JACK is in reality a didactic film that aims to educate its audience rather than entertain, which is a shame, as all of the subtext stuff is rather dull. Remove all of the 'messages' and you'd have an hour-long film.Still, the thriller aspects are well-handled even if they're overshadowed by the rest of the film, and it's fun to see a hero using martial arts before Bruce Lee hit the scene in ENTER THE DRAGON. There are the standard elements of many a '70s thriller, including rape scenes, humiliation, ass-kicking, car chases and a siege that doesn't disappointment. Laughlin is excellent in the titular role and his supporting cast, especially the Native Americans, are very good too, but it's just hard to get worked up about a film so intent on spreading the message that it loses focus of what it's all about.

Okay, here we go. In this film Billy gets bitten by a rattlesnake a half dozen times and lives. He kicks the bad rich dude upside his head, makes the rich dude's kid drive a fancy Corvette into a lake, later killing him and two LEOs and goes to jail for it. He is driven off in a squad car with people standing along both sides of the road holding their arms up in the "power" salute while we hear the band "Coven" sing "One Tin Soldier," which is really catchy. We are still informed that Billy is an ex-Green Beret. I also liked this movie as Billy was a very charismatic character. However many things are left unexplained. Why is Billy now in Arizona, not California? Whatever happened to Vickie from "The Born Losers?" How does Billy figure out that Jean was raped by Benard? Why did Delores Taylor strip naked in the film? Was that really needed? Stay tuned, the best is yet to come. (Continued on "The Trial of Billy Jack.")

One of the great iconic movies of the 70s Billy Jack came out right at the beginning of the decade and resonated powerfully with audiences, especially the young. Tom Laughlin who originated the Billy Jack character in The Born Losers was so powerful in the part that audiences wouldn't see him as anything else afterward. An interesting victim of his own success.It all starts with young Julie Webb coming home after running away from her brutal father Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Tobey. She's now pregnant as a result of too much free love in the hippie culture of the times. When Tobey proves to be as brutal as before, Webb takes refuge at a school on the Indian reservation run by Delores Taylor.The reservation and its protector Billy Jack is where we are introduced to the title character. Bert Freed who is the local kingpin in the area has organized a hunt of mustangs on the reservation for some quick money from dog food companies. Never mind that A: he's trespassing and B: that the mustangs are protected by law, he's above the law. Freed's played some truly rotten specimens in his career, but in Billy Jack he's at his worst.And the third villain of the film is David Roya who is Freed's son and a real branch off the rotten tree. As Freed constantly puts his son down, Roya goes in for some depravity that even Freed might squirm with.Billy Jack in protecting his people and there way of life and others unable to protect themselves emerges as an old fashioned straight up hero in an increasingly complex world where the bad guys sometimes aren't recognized for what they are. Not in this film though, evil is plainly labeled.Taylor's school is some kind of progressive education dream. Today she'd be a charter school and probably find willing backers. At that time though she's worried that if Laughlin goes overboard the resulting backlash will hurt her school. She sacrifices a lot for that ideal.Billy Jack the movie is firmly rooted in the times it was made, but it still has an enormous appeal for today's audiences.