Billy Jack
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Billy Jack is the second, and highest grossing, in a series of motion pictures centering on a fictional character of the same name, played by Tom Laughlin who also directed and co-wrote the script. Filming began in Prescott, Arizona, in fall 1969, but the movie was not completed until 1971. American International Pictures pulled out of the production, halting filming. Twentieth Century Fox came in and filming eventually resumed, but when that studio refused to distribute the film, Warner Bros. took over.
The film lacked distribution, so Laughlin took it to theatres himself in 1971. The film died at the box office in its initial run but took in more than $40 million in its 1973 re-release, which was supervised by Laughlin.
Plot
Billy Jack is a "half-breed" American Navajo, a Green Beret Vietnam War veteran, and a hapkido master.
Jack defends the hippie-themed Freedom School (inspired by Prescott College) and 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, without using birth control, and was abused by her father.
A group of children of various races from the school go to town for ice cream and are refused service and then abused and humiliated by Bernard Posner (David Roya), the son of the county's corrupt political boss (Bert Freed), and his gang. This prompts a violent outburst by Billy. Billy goes through a Navajo Indian iniation where he gets bitten purposely by a deadly rattlesnake, so that he would become the blood brother to the snake, which he does survive. Meanwhile, Barbara loses her unborn child, when the horse she was riding, stumbles on a rock, causing her to fall off the horse. Following an incident, involving Jean, Billy gives Bernard a choice of either receiving a cut arm, or to drive his Corvette into the lake, in which Barnard does the latter. Later, Jean is 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 a climactic shootout with the police and pleading with Jean, Billy Jack surrenders to the authorities in exchange for a decade-long guarantee that the school will be allowed to continue to run with Jean as its head. As Billy is driven away in handcuffs, a large crowd of supporters raise their fists as a show of defiance and support.
Cast
- Tom Laughlin as Billy Jack
- Delores Taylor as Jean Roberts
- David Roya as Bernard Posner
- Clark Howat as Sheriff Cole
- Victor Izay as Doctor
- Julie Webb as Barbara
- Debbie Schock as Kit
- Teresa Kelly as Carol
- Lynn Baker as Sarah
- Stan Rice as Martin
- John McClure as Dinosaur
- Susan Foster as Cindy
- Susan Sosa as Sunshine
- Bert Freed as Mr. Stuart Posner
- Kenneth Tobey as Deputy Mike
- Howard Hesseman as Howard (credited as Don Sturdy)
- Cisse Cameron as Miss False Eyelashes (credited as Cissie Colpitts)
