Cast:
Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack), Elizabeth James (Vicky Barrington), Jeremy Slate (Daniel 'Danny' Carmody), William Wellman Jr. (Child), Jack Starrett (Deputy Fred), Robert Cleaves (Mr. Crawford), Paul Bruce (District Attorney George Davis), Robert Tessier (Cueball), Paul Prokop (Speechless), Jeff Cooper (Gangrene), Stuart Lancaster (Sheriff Harvey), Anne Bellamy (Mrs. Prang), with Ruth Warshawsky (Nurse) and special guest star Jane Russell (Mrs. Shorn) Directed by Tom Laughlin (#1196 - Billy Jack)
Review:
First, one needs a few facts. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tom Laughlin was actually into football first, even playing two positions at Marquette University; seeing a production of A Streetcar Named Desire pushed a desire to act, and he transferred to the University of South Dakota to major in acting. It was in the summer of 1967 that Tom Laughlin got his first crack to do a movie with the character of Billy Jack, which he first thought of in 1954 after seeing the mistreatment of Native Americans in the hometown of his wife Delores Taylor. Over the next couple of years, he would do a handful of performances on television and film, which included his first starring role in The Delinquents (1958). He got his first chances to direct with The Proper Time (1960) and Like Father, Like Son (1961) that saw him write and produce along with star, but neither were particularly successful. Laughlin left the film business for five years to dedicate all of his time to the Montessori preschool that he and his wife had established in 1959 in Santa Monica, California. The school, which had received national publicity from the press, closed in 1965 due to bankruptcy. Perhaps not surprisingly, he returned to film. Laughlin intended to fully produce the movie alongside directing and acting as well. However, he ran out of money in post-production, so he had to see if he could get some funding from who else- American International Pictures, masters of the exploitation circuit. Given the fact that Laughlin decided to hone right into the boom of the biker movie that had been seen with schlock such as The Wild Angels (1966), it fit right in for AIP to fund and release. The movie was shot in three weeks for roughly $160,000, complete with using rented houses and a real motorcycle gang in The Devil's Disciples. AIP intended to distribute Billy Jack (1971), but the studio refused after seeing the final cut, which led to Laughlin making a deal with Warner Brothers (after 20th Century Fox made a deal and reneged on Laughlin). That release did not succeed well, but Laughlin's decision to sue the studio and re-release it himself two years later did work well for him to the point where AIP did a re-release of The Born Losers and riled Laughlin up by having ads that called it the original Billy Jack.
Remember Broken Arrow (1950)? You know, the movie that tried to feature a balanced story involving Native Americans and someone on the frontier that seemed different from the "Cowboys and Indians" type of Western? In a sense, Laughlin is making a Western with this movie, but the idea that his self-described half Native American who is also an ex-Green Beret is anything special when compared to previous movies is just as silly as it would be for the following feature. This one also took inspiration from real-life events, as it was based on an incident from 1964 where members of the Hells Angels were arrested for raping two teenage girls in Monterey, California. This results in a movie that shows the fuzzy contradiction that encapsulates Laughlin as a director within the character he created: he can make a decent action scene with its setup, but the values that come with his bully pulpit make for moments that are amusing to laugh at rather than actually engage with at face value. In trying to teach some sort of weird pacifism in the face of violence, one simply brushes the anti-establishment stuff with a yawn and a chuckle - to say nothing of the scenes where victims are depicted as actually enjoying their encounters with the bikers because of how their parents raised them. This was the only starring role for James, who actually shows the semblance of "charm" and "engagement with the material", one who surely deserved better things than being in a bikini and having to share time with mono-Laughlin. Slate actually makes a quality villain in the exploitation angle for weird crass influences, even if the presentation of him with his family muddles things a bit (when I think about exploitation movies with bad guys, I don't think if they have kids); one just needs weirdos that love James Dean but dress up with Nazi stuff to raise hell. Russell is there to chew scenery for tears that Laughlin uses to about what you would expect for a movie that dares to have a guest star.
Seeing the 1967 Billy Jack before the 1971 sequel is a hell of a trip, if only because the earlier film is somehow a better movie in execution despite being made to cash in on the exploitation craze as opposed to the weirdo movie that was done later (of course, if you saw the 1967 movie second, the whole argument about quality is even more pronounced); in short, the B-movie is better than the passion project. The exploitation angle is far more interesting to consider than seeing Laughlin in a setup that makes him look like he robbed Marlon Brando but forgot to get the talent factor; you could probably do an entire dub of the movie and have the same amount of charisma as Laughlin (while also making up a whole new background to explain the lily-white weirdo who is our lead). He does better in the action sequence in part because that involves him not having to come up with the attempt of empathy or timing. For a movie at 113 minutes, he also managed to make a movie that is way too damn long, as it lags in the second half (there's a sequence where an astrologer asks them about their birthdays!) before limping to a siege climax that only barely delivers the actual reason to watch - exploitation! Urgency is what is needed, not shots of dead animals. If Laughlin wants to play cowboy-sorry, weird pacifist/asskicker, the best thing one could have done with the character is to take the script from him and have a real discussion over what the hell he wanted to do that wasn't just fanfiction of himself (case in point: shooting the villain between the eyes in one shot). In other words: subtle measures of staging a message within action works way better than throwing everything together and hoping it sticks for some moral revolution bullshit that might actually make an argument for studio system films. In the end, Laughlin may have been a maverick film director who did what he could to get his point across in filmmaking, but it doesn't mean that his failures should be outweighed by his intentions, which is the case with a mediocre movie in the case of The Born Losers. It may prove interesting if you want to spend nearly two hours of your time trying not to make fun of its star/director, so take that into consideration.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
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