Billy Jack

1971 film directed by Tom Laughlin
the album by honeyhoney

Billy Jack is a 1971 American action drama independent film, the second of four films centering on a character of the same name which began with the movie The Born Losers (1967), played by Tom Laughlin, who directed and co wrote the script. Filming began in Prescott, Arizona, in the fall of 1969, but the movie was not completed until 1971. American International Pictures pulled out, halting filming. 20th Century Fox came forward and filming eventually resumed but when that studio refused to distribute the film, Warner Bros. stepped forward. Still, the film lacked distribution, so Laughlin booked it into theaters himself in 1971. with distribution supervised by Laughlin.

Billy Jack, a mixed race Navajo, is a Green Beret Vietnam War veteran and a hapkido master. He defends the hippie themed Freedom School (inspired by Prescott College) and its students from townspeople who do not understand or like the counterculture students. The school is organized by its director, Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor). One of the troubled youths is a girl named Barbara, who became pregnant and was abused by her father. A group of children of various races from the school goes to town for ice cream but is refused service. They are then abused and humiliated by Bernard Posner (David Roya), the son of the county's corrupt political boss Stuart Posner (Bert Freed), and his gang. This prompts a violent outburst by Billy. Billy undergoes a Navajo initiation in which he is deliberately bitten by a large rattlesnake, intending to become the blood brother to the snake. Meanwhile, Barbara loses her unborn child when the horse she is riding stumbles on a rock, leading to her falling off the horse. Bernard attempts a sexual assault on a woman in his car, but is stopped by Jean and Billy, who give Bernard a choice: either receive a dislocated elbow or drive his Corvette into the lake. Bernard chooses the latter. Later, Jean is kidnapped and raped by Bernard, who also murders a Native American student. Billy confronts Bernard, whom he catches in bed with a 13 year old girl, and sustains a gunshot wound before killing him with a hand strike to the throat. After barricading himself following a climactic shootout with the police and pleading from Jean, Billy Jack surrenders to the authorities in exchange for a decade long guarantee that the school will be allowed to continue running with Jean as its head. As Billy is driven away in handcuffs, a large crowd of supporters raises their fists in a show of defiance and support.

Billy Jack holds a "Fresh" rating of 63% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 16 reviews, with an average grade of 5.4/10. The website The Grindhouse Database, and the book Search and Clear: Critical Responses to Selected Literature and Films of the Vietnam War list this movie as belonging to the vetsploitation subgenre. Film critic Leonard Maltin at first gave Billy Jack 3.5 stars out of 4, calling it "Uneven in spots but tremendously powerful." Later he downgraded it to 1.5 stars, writing, "Seen today, its politics are highly questionable, and its 'message' of peace looks ridiculous, considering the amount of violence in the film." Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and also saw the message of the film as self contradictory, writing: "I'm also somewhat disturbed by the central theme of the movie. Billy Jack seems to be saying the same thing as Born Losers; that a gun is better than a constitution in the enforcement of justice." Howard Thompson, writing for The New York Times agreed, calling the film "well aimed but misguided" as he wrote, "For a picture that preaches pacifism, Billy Jack seems fascinated by its violence, of which it is full." He added that "some of the non professional delivery of lines in the script by Mr. Frank and Teresa Christina is incredibly awful." Variety magazine opined that "the action frequently drags" and at nearly two hours' running length, "The message is rammed down the spectators" throats and is sorely in need of considerable editing to tell a straightforward story." Gene Siskel gave Billy Jack 3.5 stars out of 4, calling it "a film that tries to say too many things in too many ways within an adequate story line, but it has such freshness, original humor and compassion that one is frequently moved to genuine emotion". Kevin Thomas, in the Los Angeles Times, also liked Billy Jack, praising its "searing tension that sustains it through careening unevenness to a smash finish. Crude and sensational yet urgent and pertinent, this provocative Warners release is in its unique, awkward way one of the year's important pictures." Gary Arnold, writing for The Washington Post panned Billy Jack as "horrendously self righteous and devious", explaining, "Every social issue is dramatized in terms of absolute, apolitical good and evil. The good guys are next to angelic, while the bad guys are, according to the needs of the moment, utter buffoons or utter devils. Anyone with the slightest trace of skepticism or sophistication would tend to reject the movie out of hand and with good reason, since this kind of simplification is dramatically and socially deceitful." David Wilson, in The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "If in the end Billy Jack is as much a sell out as any glossier version of commercialised iconoclasm (Billy Jack is persuaded to accept guarantees which a hundred years of Indian history have repudiated), there is enough innocent sincerity in the film to demonstrate that Tom Laughlin at least has the courage of his convictions, even if those convictions are scarcely thought out." Delores Taylor received a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcoming Actress. Tom Laughlin won the grand prize for Billy Jack at the 1971 Taormina Film Fest in Italy.

A direct sequel followed with The Trial of Billy Jack (1974). Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) followed three years later, but without a formal release. Plans for The Return of Billy Jack came and went in the mid 1980s.

The film score was composed, arranged and conducted by Mundell Lowe and the soundtrack album was originally released on the Warner Bros. label.