Starring: Tom Laughlin, Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Julie Webb, David Roya Directed By: T. C. Frank Average Rating: Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: VHS Tape Format: Color, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 1 Release Date: April 27, 1994 Running Time: 114 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 1971
Amazon.com: This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy Jack's way of doing things and that of the school's founder (Delores Taylor), but their tension doesn't so much lead to an examination of principles as it leads to an excuse for Laughlin to incorporate fight scenes between hippie politics. Crude and brutal, the film is pretty exploitative of a viewer's torn sympathies, and in that way Billy Jack actually anticipates much of the simple-minded, violent fare that followed in the movies of the '70s and '80s. --Tom Keogh
very good the video I recieved was very good quality. It came in perfect condition and played perfectly when put in my machine.
Received it in no time I first watched Billy Jack when I was a teenager ( when it first came out ). The DVD arrived in no time in perfect condition. Watching Billy Jack again after all these years was great, I enjoyed it as much as I first did, although being an adult now I saw it from a more adult perspective rather than from a teens perspective. It was great.
Entertaining Some reviewers are lambasting this film as being "pretentious", and otherwise unreal. Well...it IS unreal, it's a MOVIE. If it's politically incorrect, so what??? I watch movies for the entertainment factor, not the reality factor. If you want reality just turn on the 6 o'clock news. As for the karate, it must be a popular thing considering the success of Bruce Lee's films (and now Jet Li). Yeah, it's a movie about an ex Green Beret who defends the school kids because he wants them to live without having to fight the way he does...so that makes him a big brother figure trying to change the future for the kids. Come to think of it, isn't that what our government is always doing...bomb the heck out of somebody so we can live in peace??? Maybe Billy Jack should have run for president! Then he would have had political immunity and not had to go to jail.
One of the best movies ever made You don't get/watch this movie for the production values. You don't get this movie for the 70's nostalgia or the flower-power hippie esque themes.
You get this movie because of a very simple thing. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. This movie is about having the courage to do what's right - no matter the cost.
Billy Jack is the archetype of the great protector who turns to violence because sometimes it's the only way. And this movie is the 300 of the seventies.
Ironic how true it all rings when we look at the battles Tom Laughlin had with hollywood and with the government when it came to making and screening the Billy Jack Movies.
Phony Pandering Hippie Drivel Like many children of the 70's, I was fascinated by this yarn in the day. I saw it several times and dutifully saw "Born Losers" ( a exploitation re-release that features Billy Jack's character, and a far better film) as well as "The Trial of Billy Jack" (the third installment and even worse than this outing). Years later, it's enlightening to realize what we have outgrown from our youth. The acting, directing and production is pretty awful, but forgivable. The ideology spouted in this stinker is a fast food bastardization of the worst "hold hands and sing together" hippie trash. Tom Laughlin plays the title role of former Green Beret and reclusive "half-breed" ( their words) protector of a southwestern "Freedom School" where love interest/head schoolmarm Jean (Delores Taylor) and her doltish charges harbor runaways,perform dreadful improv and guerilla theatre and generally get under the skin of redneck cowboy law enforcement in their town. When Jean protects the runaway daughter of local lawman, tension come to a head and Billy Jack must step away from the pacifism he and Jean cherish and lay gratuitous Kung Fu beatdowns on local bullies.For martial arts fans, the payoff are far and few, if you enjoy rape scenes ( and I sure hope you do NOT!) there are a couple of man-with-knife-doing-bad-things-to-women scenes that appear as salacious panders to this element.
If watching the Freedom School kids travel around like a Marxist Partidge Family in their stupid hippie bus doesn't make you dread Flower Child nostalgia, you will surely be disgusted by the use of violence to market non-violence, the lecturing moral high ground tone of the films message and the all around insipid style of this useless atrifact.
(NOTE* all martial arts in the film are performed by Laughlins stand-in, the great Master Bong Soo Han, and if you look closely you'll notice a distinct physical disimilarity between Laughlin and the man doing great roundhouse kicks)
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