The Trial of Billy Jack
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Movie Reviews of The Trial of Billy Jack
Movie Review: NOT LETTERBOXED!!
Summary: 2 Stars
I really enjoy the BILLY JACK movies and my review would carry a much higher rating if this Panavision film was properly letterboxed! TRIAL OF BJ and IN WASHINGTON were both shot in Panavision....IN WASHINGTON is letterboxed appropriately at 2.35:1, but TRIAL is pan & scan(full screen)--the viewer is missing a significant amount of the filmed frame!! This is just a warning to folks such as myself who like to see movies the way they were meant to be seen, with the compositions unspoiled! This is the only DVD in the set that opens with the Warner Brothers logo, so it is possible that this old Warner transfer is the only thing they had available for the production of this title--but it's too bad that the opportunity was missed to see this classic the way it was originally filmed!
Movie Review: Some interesting info....
Summary: 2 Stars
These were very good, inspiring movies...in 1971 I got my black belt in Isshinryu at age 17....I'm still practicing Isshinryu, native american medicine, Tae Kwon Do, and Kyokushinkai...and Falun Dafa...35 years later...
By the way...the "Billy Jack" series was inspired by the life of Harley "Swiftdeer" Reagan...who is still living and in charge of the Deer Tribe in Phoenix, Az...In the second movie in the cave scene is Tom "Two Bears" Wilson, who taught Swiftdeer...Tom Wilson was Don Genaro in the Carlos Castenada books....thought I'd let everyone in on this....
Movie Review: Sanctimonious ego-trip!
Summary: 1 Stars
"The Trial of Billy Jack" was one of the bigger box-office hits of the 1970's. Yet today it is almost utterly forgotten except by nostalgic, aging hippies and bad movie buffs.
The third of the four Billy Jack movies, and the second film in the series which expounded the far left political beliefs of its star/writer/director/producer Tom Laughlin, "The Trial of Billy Jack" is a nearly three hour exercise of sanctimonious self-aggrandizement and leftist political diatribes presented in the most juvenile manner possible. It was also massive ego-trip on the behalf of Laughlin.
It may be understandable that Laughlin's ego was running on overdrive when he made this piece of dreck. Afterall he had just scored a massive hit with 1971's "Billy Jack." Written, directed, and starring Laughlin in the title role, "Billy Jack" was an updated version of "Shane" brilliantly marketed to flower children. Basically, it was a violent action movie with a protagonist that punched, kicked, and shot his way through waves of rednecks in order to make the world safe for flower power. "Billy Jack" is now laughably dated, but how it was marketed set the standard for today's blockbusters and it influenced Stallone's "First Blood" and several Steven Seagal movies. However, Laughlin failed to see that the success of "Billy Jack" had mainly derived from its being a shrewd action flick with a counter-culture bent, and instead misinterpretated that it was the film's leftist politics that had been the driving force behind its success.
The result of that misreading was "The Trial of Billy Jack" which contains hours of rambling discourse on Indian rights and political corruption and tons of faux American Indian spirituality, but not enough of the kung fu for peace violence that had made "Billy Jack" such a hit with drug-addled, hypocritical hippies. In other words- it's BORING! Oh, it does contain scenes of Billy Jack punching faces, breaking bones, and crushing throats in the name of peace and love, but those scenes are few in comparison to the non-stop sanctimonious preaching on the part of Laughlin and his homely, untalented wife and co-star, Delores Taylor, who plays "Jean" the director of the absurd Freedom School and Billy's main squeeze.
The actual trial in "The Trial of Billy Jack" is just a small part of the film. Billy is convicted and receives a light jail sentence for killing at least two people during the events of "Billy Jack." (It's hard to take seriously the film's constant attacks on the oppressive "system" when that system sends a murderer to jail for just a few brief years.) Meanwhile Jean's Freedom School becomes a force of political agitation through "scorching exposes" of politicians and capitalists by founding a television station and inventing a machine that can tell when a person on TV or radio is lying. Of course, "the Man," who is the victim of these "scorching exposes," is determined to shut down Jean and her Freedom School by any means possible.
Billy is released from prison and reunited with the love of his life, his hat. Tensions rise between the Freedom School hippies and the powers-that-be and their redneck goons with Billy saving hippie butt from redneck beatdowns. Tears flow constantly from Jean. And it goes on and on. By the end, when the National Guard storms the school and starts blasting hippies, you'll be cheering: "Get them!"
"The Trial of Billy Jack" was Laughlin's last hurrah. To his credit, he had made this movie with his own money so his vision would be uncomprimised. When critics justifiably savaged the movie, Laughlin retorted through full page ads in major newspapers. The end result was that Laughlin lost most of his fortune. He also lost his audience. The kids may have shown up for opening weekend in droves with visions of the violent "Billy Jack" in their memories, but they never came back after the borefest that is this film. The last "Billy Jack" movie, "Billy Jack Goes to Washington" was barely released and Laughlin quietly disappeared from the film scene.
Movie Review: Historical Inaccuracies Galore
Summary: 1 Stars
I saw this movie in late 1974 when it first came out. I noted the references to historical incidents such as the Kent State shooting, My Lai Massacre and Watergate among others. I did a lot of research on the claims made by Laughlin's movie and was appalled at the inaccuracies and down right lies.
I sent a long letter to Tom Laughlin's business Billy Jack Enterprises. He never answered me. That was 30 years ago. Now he has a website. I sent him an email version and he didn't answer that either.
In the beginning Jean (Delores Taylor) is being interviewed. She refers to Kent State (the May 4, 1970 shooting of 13 students at that university) and claims Attorney John Mitchell said there was no need to investigate the incident because he knew in advance the Guardsmen couldn't be responsible for the shooting. This is absolutely wrong. Mitchell never made that statement and the FBI was out at the campus the next day investigating.
Jean also said that even after fault was found on the part of he Guard "as usual Washington did nothing about it." Unbelievable, considering that when this movie was being made (in 1974) federal prosecutors indicted four guardsman!
In another part of the film, Billy Jack is referring to My Lai and all the "colonels and generals and White House aides who ordered the whole affair." White House aides? This is preposterous. (But it sounded sexy and intriguing during the Watergate era.) For the record, one lieutenant colonel ordered the offensive into the area and Lt. Calley himself ordered the massacre.
Moving on, Jean says about another situation, "I remember because [President] Ford had just shocked the nation by pardoning Nixon and agreeing to let him destroy the tapes." The second part is another untruth. Ford actually just gave Nixon partial control over access to the tapes, which were put in the custody of the General Services Administration in San Clemente. Nixon was given no authorization to destroy the tapes.
And then there is the issue of the "International Seminar on Child Abuse" which contains more nonsense. The movie makes Jean and the Freedom School look like they are the great enlightened champions of humane treatment of abusers and portrays the world of professional therapists as being in the Dark Ages.
A doctor says: "So in summary, you're saying that to love these people that we find dispicable, that we hate. And I can really hate these people that cut off the fingers of their children and beat their children. And that somehow in the experience of loving them, they're going to change before our eyes and stop beating their children?"
She isn't even sounding like a doctor, she's sounding like a cynical police officer. This is one of the more egregious misrepresentations in the film. In reality, the Freedom School's methods of treatment were the contemporary standards among mental health professionals at that time! (and still are)
In another part, an Indian spiritual guide told Billy that Kit Carson had 400 Navajo men, women and children rounded up and massacred in a cave. This is another fabrication. There is no record of Carson doing such a thing. What the scriptwriters could have mentioned is that some Spaniards committed such an atrocity. They rounded up some Indians in a section of Canyon de Chelley in northwestern Arizona and killed them in a cave in 1804. The cave is called "Massacre Cave" not "Cave of the Dead" (the movie phrase).
Also, the writers could have mentioned a factual outrage by Kit Carson, his "Trail of Tears" death marches of Indians in 1864 to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico.
There is more I could mention. Laughlin, as the main producer, was incredibly irresponsible with the script. No one should take the claims made in this movie seriously.
Movie Review: The Trial of Billy Jack.
Summary: 1 Stars
Why isn't the Trial of Billy Jack Ever mentioned? It's probably because it's GODAWFUL. I commend anyone sitting through this long hippietrash propaganda.While Born Losers was Actually GOOD. Billy Jack and the subsequent films after were AWFUL with a Capital A. For Some reason Delores Taylor(Who is so Ugly) is in every movie along with the Mr.Self Important preaching to The "Man" what is wrong with Society. Thank God Hippies are now just in a few Elitist cities in obscurity talking about what could have been done. I know what could have been done,A Clean shave and A SHOWER.