Runtime: 114 minutes
Directed by: Tom Laughlin
Starring: Tom Laughlin,
Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Victor Izay, Julie Webb
From: National Student
Film Corporation
Now I am caught up with
everything I've seen lately and have not talked about here before.
What an improbable success this movie was, at least if you look at it
from a modern perspective:
You know, Tom Laughlin was the Steven
Seagal of his day. I am not talking about all the controversy
surrounding Seagal and how he is now buddies with Putin and or how it's
now pretty clear he has sexually harassed many different women for a
number of years. Rather, I am talking about how both were white dudes
who felt a kinship with Native Americans, showed off a particular
martial art that was unique to film at the time, loved the environment,
and had a pacifist approach even though their characters kicked a lot of
ass and yeah, people would get killed.
Here is an article by Nathan Rabin where he talks about the first three movies involving the Billy Jack character and how weird it all is while viewed through a modern lens. I'll copy and paste part of it in order to describe all the different elements of this film that are smushed together:
“It’s most logical to conceive of Billy Jack as a dream-movie accidentally created by a spiritually confused, LSD-addled 19-year-old who fell asleep in the early 1970s while watching a weird, humorless movie about a half-Native American/half-Caucasian warrior who does not want to fight, because he’s too good—both in the sense of being a singularly skilled one-man killing machine, and in subscribing to a higher moral and ideological cause than his bloodthirsty brothers-in-arms. And yet he’s pushed by circumstances into dramatically kicking ass, over and over.
Said 19-year-old would drift off early on and awake to find himself watching a town-hall meeting where the generational divide is being loudly debated by staid figures of the establishment and agitated, weirdly wholesome hippie types. After more dosing, the 19-year-old is watching a young Howard Hesseman illustrate beginner improvisation techniques and the philosophy of provocative street theater to someone on a local talk show. The next awakening finds the TV devoted to an earnest blonde moppet stridently singing an anti-war song, and then a song about a “Rainbow Made Of Children” in a voice quivering with righteous indignation.
The 19-year-old decides to go outside and attempt to purge the confusing jumble of images and messages from his head, but first, he catches intriguing, perplexing flashes of two more television programs—one a PBS documentary on alternative forms of schooling, and the other on Native American spirituality. It’s understandable why he’s confused: It’s not as if vigilante crime movies naturally segue into demonstrations of improvisational comedy technique and then into rage-filled acoustic musical interludes. Yet Billy Jack contains all of the above.”
The general plot is that Billy Jack lives on a Native American reservation which houses an “alternative” school where people of all types live at... really, it's a hippie hangout. The locals of the nearby town do not appreciate those “long-haired weirdos” so they face constant harassment, including from law enforcement. They try to make peace (which results in by far the worst part of the movie, which is all the time spent on the youths and the townspeople doing improv with each other... Lord was that interminable) but it doesn't work out.
This is a sanitized, idealized version of what a hippie commune would be (no drugs or sex!) yet I am not surprised that a young movie-going audience would love a character who dug nature, was a pacifist & supported a hippie way of life. In late 2018, this film is a mess, but I am sure it was a “right place, right time” scenario for this becoming such a hit, and what an unusual path it took: the studio changed from AIP to 20th Century Fox to Warner Bros., whom released it in '71 and it made some money... only for Laughlin to sue in order to release it himself as he wanted to do the then-strange method of giving this a wide release. He won and in '73 this made a LOT of money when he put it out again independently. I suppose we have him to thank-or blame-for wide releases now becoming the way to put out most movies.
I won't rip on the acting, even though sometimes it isn't too good; the same goes for the overall filmmaking. Poor Delores Taylor-Laughlin's wife-was not originally going to be the female lead but the lead girl from The Born Losers was supposed to return, only to drop out. Taylor reluctantly did it even though she had never acted before, and she had to do some heavy dramatic scenes. I just discovered she had Alzheimer's for years and passed away this past spring.
As I have the two sequels to this on disc I will have to watch them another day; after the insanity of this movie, I probably did need a break from seeing The Trial of Billy Jack, which I understand is even more self-indulgent and pure unfiltered Laughlin... you probably would already think “self-indulgence” once I inform you that motion picture is almost THREE hours long. Anyhow, what a time capsule this turned out to be.
Here is an article by Nathan Rabin where he talks about the first three movies involving the Billy Jack character and how weird it all is while viewed through a modern lens. I'll copy and paste part of it in order to describe all the different elements of this film that are smushed together:
“It’s most logical to conceive of Billy Jack as a dream-movie accidentally created by a spiritually confused, LSD-addled 19-year-old who fell asleep in the early 1970s while watching a weird, humorless movie about a half-Native American/half-Caucasian warrior who does not want to fight, because he’s too good—both in the sense of being a singularly skilled one-man killing machine, and in subscribing to a higher moral and ideological cause than his bloodthirsty brothers-in-arms. And yet he’s pushed by circumstances into dramatically kicking ass, over and over.
Said 19-year-old would drift off early on and awake to find himself watching a town-hall meeting where the generational divide is being loudly debated by staid figures of the establishment and agitated, weirdly wholesome hippie types. After more dosing, the 19-year-old is watching a young Howard Hesseman illustrate beginner improvisation techniques and the philosophy of provocative street theater to someone on a local talk show. The next awakening finds the TV devoted to an earnest blonde moppet stridently singing an anti-war song, and then a song about a “Rainbow Made Of Children” in a voice quivering with righteous indignation.
The 19-year-old decides to go outside and attempt to purge the confusing jumble of images and messages from his head, but first, he catches intriguing, perplexing flashes of two more television programs—one a PBS documentary on alternative forms of schooling, and the other on Native American spirituality. It’s understandable why he’s confused: It’s not as if vigilante crime movies naturally segue into demonstrations of improvisational comedy technique and then into rage-filled acoustic musical interludes. Yet Billy Jack contains all of the above.”
The general plot is that Billy Jack lives on a Native American reservation which houses an “alternative” school where people of all types live at... really, it's a hippie hangout. The locals of the nearby town do not appreciate those “long-haired weirdos” so they face constant harassment, including from law enforcement. They try to make peace (which results in by far the worst part of the movie, which is all the time spent on the youths and the townspeople doing improv with each other... Lord was that interminable) but it doesn't work out.
This is a sanitized, idealized version of what a hippie commune would be (no drugs or sex!) yet I am not surprised that a young movie-going audience would love a character who dug nature, was a pacifist & supported a hippie way of life. In late 2018, this film is a mess, but I am sure it was a “right place, right time” scenario for this becoming such a hit, and what an unusual path it took: the studio changed from AIP to 20th Century Fox to Warner Bros., whom released it in '71 and it made some money... only for Laughlin to sue in order to release it himself as he wanted to do the then-strange method of giving this a wide release. He won and in '73 this made a LOT of money when he put it out again independently. I suppose we have him to thank-or blame-for wide releases now becoming the way to put out most movies.
I won't rip on the acting, even though sometimes it isn't too good; the same goes for the overall filmmaking. Poor Delores Taylor-Laughlin's wife-was not originally going to be the female lead but the lead girl from The Born Losers was supposed to return, only to drop out. Taylor reluctantly did it even though she had never acted before, and she had to do some heavy dramatic scenes. I just discovered she had Alzheimer's for years and passed away this past spring.
As I have the two sequels to this on disc I will have to watch them another day; after the insanity of this movie, I probably did need a break from seeing The Trial of Billy Jack, which I understand is even more self-indulgent and pure unfiltered Laughlin... you probably would already think “self-indulgence” once I inform you that motion picture is almost THREE hours long. Anyhow, what a time capsule this turned out to be.
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