The Trial of Billy Jack (1974)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I finally broke down and watched the 1971 film a few days ago. I'm old enough where I remember these films (but was too young to see them... I SWEAR they were "R"s on release), which mostly played back to back at the drive-ins and also remember the relentless parodies in the early days of SNL.Shockingly, the 1971 film isn't horrible, it's really kind of good. It has heart and the basic structure of a good old schlocky Walking Tall semi-grindhouse picture. It's wildly dated, yet it's hard not to feel a touch of admiration at the spirit shown by Laughlin and Taylor (Taylor even acts fairly well in the '71 film), even when the filmmakers are so obviously out of their depths in virtually every technical department. "Billy Jack" has the weirdly contagious feel of an improvised film, which it sounds like it almost was.By contrast, The Trial of Billy Jack is every bit as bad as you've heard it is... a completely unwatchable vanity picture and an monumentally poor one at that. Since the core cast and the Christinas (helming the "script") stayed the same, one can only determine the bulk of the failure lies with the director, and that's "director" in title-only. Don't think for a minute that anyone had control of this chaotic jaw-dropping idiotic free-for-all.From camping Billy up as a Christ figure, complete with Jesus and Judas in a test in the desert, to bad Kung Fu parodies with wack "effects" that could have been made by shining a Lite Bright into the lens (now you know I'm old) to Laughlin and Taylor having basically the same exchange 50 times ("Damn it Billy, when are you going to learn?" "Aw shucks Jean, what choice do I have?") to Laughlin's over-the-top mind-numbing "gloating" before he "gets physical" with the baddies... all in slow motion.... they literally stand still waiting to be pulverized... to the simply god-awful 3 hour run time (of which 2 hours could easily have been cut) you can't get a better example of how NOT to make a movie.This was no labor of love.... just one of insanity. Your pet guinea pig could make a more coherent film, and one you'd be able to sit through without that required fast-forward button.

I tried to sit through this movie when it was released in 1974. It was bad then, but it actually gets worse with time. So many "causes" and so many pure "untruths" that make this movie just a pathetic piece of liberal hogwash. I can't see how Tom and Delores can be any way proud of this work as time goes by. While watching, this reviewer want to get up and shake the actors and yell "wake up". It is obvious that the actors have had little if any training in their craft and most of the dialog is about as predictable as it gets. When Billy is released from prison and saves the day, the viewer has no doubt that another sequel is in the works. The Trial of Billy Jack is a perfect example of the idealism of many in the 1970's, and how naive many of us were at the time

**SPOILERS** With the earth-shaking success of his last film "Billy Jack" that took in an astounding 35 million in ticket sales in the box office, compared to the $500,000.00 that it took him to produced, Tom Laughlin-who played the fearless and sh*t-kicking half Indian half Irishman Green Beret hero in the film- was more then eager to follow up that movie with a sequel.Having Billy arrested and brought to trial for the karate kicking death of Bernard Rosner in "Billy Jack" it was a given that a film had to be made, the public demanded it, of Billy's trial and how he handles himself on the stand like he did handling the bad guys in the movie. Sad to say the 170 minute movie "The Trial of Billy Jack" was not really about his trial, that lasted no more then ten minutes of screen time, but the suffering of Billy's girlfriend Jean Roberts, Delores Taylor. It was Jean together with some 50 students of her government funded Freedom School who was gunned down by a bunch of trigger happy national guardsmen in a Kent State-like massacre in them being mistaken for being a gang of home grown terrorists and drug crazed, on pot, hippies. Almost the entire film is told in flashback by a crippled Jean in her hospital bed in how a series of tragic events lead to the school massacre that she's a survivor of.Having been released from prison after serving five years for involuntary manslaughter, the justifiable death of Bernard Rosner, Billy is back in town, or on the Indian reservation, and with a new outlook on life. Going into the mountains to have his soul cleansed of all impurities like violence and revenge Billy hopes to become a true Christ-like pacifist and man of love where his ability and skills of the martial arts would no longer be useful, or beneficial, to him. In that Billy Jack's film success is based on his sh*t kicking abilities not his turn the other cheek pacifism you know that his peaceful and passive outlook on life, as well as his and the Freedom School's enemies, wouldn't last too long!It's when Jean's students start to expose local as well as national, from the president on down, crooked politicians and their big business supporters with a serious of scorching exposes on the students-run TV station that those who run the country, and our lives, decide to put their foot down; On Jean's and her student's necks. Using a bunch of paid off American Indian leaders to sell their people out, by signing away their land rights, the late Bernard's father Mr. Posner, Riley Hill, who runs to state bank has Jean and her students threatened and harassed at every turn in having their precious Freedom School taken away from them. It's when Posner & Co. try to take over the secrete Indian Land adjutant to the Freedom School, as well as the school itself, that Billy who's been in deep meditation with his both dead as well as live Indian ancestors, as well as his deep inner self, comes on the scene.It's after a series of minor attacks on Jean and the Freedom school, like the bombing the TV station, that Rosner and his goons decide to go full tilt and finally put an end to the school's activities once and for all. That's In the schools, through a series of scorching exposes, exposing Rosner and his fellow crook's crimes against the Amerian Indians, as well as the American people. Rosner & Co. being totally unsuccessfully in putting Jean and her Freedom School out of business now plans to have the state and federal government do their dirty work for them.Nowhere as good as the previous Billy Jack movies, "Born Losers" & "Billy Jack", the film "The Trial of Billy Jack" despite it's marathon-like screen time, a world-class marathon runner runs that race faster then the length of the movie, it's not at all boring. What really spoiled the movie for me is that I expected, but knowing better, Billy to throw off his violent past and become a true man of the spirits where violence would be the absolute last thing on his mind. The fact that Billy was so eager to use his fists and feet instead of his spiritual attributes, as a peaceful and environmentally conscious American Indian, made him no better then the violent and mindless brutes that confronted him in the movie!P.S The movie had Billy Jack at his trial bring out how the infamous Lt. Calley's Mi Lie massacre of some 300 Vietnamese villagers was covered up by the then President of the United States Richard Nixon. The fact is that the Mi Lie massacre happened on March 16, 1968 when at the time Lyndon Johnson, not Nixon, was President.

Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) spends four years in prison for his killing of a sheriff's deputy. During that time, the Freedom School, a hippie commune led by Billy's lover Jean (Delores Taylor) begins to prosper, releasing newspapers and TV that stick it to the man, caring for underprivileged and abused children, and no doubt doing lots of drugs (oh, I'm sorry - drug use is against the rules there). Billy helps the Indians and the Freedom School stick up to the crooked landowner Posner (Riley Hill), who ultimately calls out the police and National Guard, with tragic (I guess) results."The Trial of Billy Jack" is an atrocious film that has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, that may be too high of a price. While it maintains some of the camp value of its predecessors, any enjoyment, unintentional or otherwise, is done in by the fact that the movie is THREE FRICKING HOURS LONG!!! The movie's pretentious, overwrought and hilariously un-ironic political and social content isn't the problem here; it's the length, and boy does it drag.The first Billy Jack had a certain purity of form. Clocking in at about two hours, it was a reasonably entertaining film which managed to be watchable, with the camp cheesiness and overwrought hippie world-view only enhancing the experience. The movie could never reconcile its pleas for pacifism with the appeal of Billy Jack's martial arts heroics, but it hardly mattered. The overlong guerrilla theater routines by Howard Hesseman and the interminable music numbers were the biggest flaws, but Laughlin managed to keep himself in check.No such luck here, as Trial of Billy Jack drips with a potent strain of narcissism. Laughlin's film is filled to the brim of self-indulgence, padding the film's running time with self-indulgence and smug posturing. At least a third of the movie is lengthy, droning performances of atrocious excuses for "music", by people with no talent (most egregiously, Laughlin's daughter Teresa). Billy Jack is continually celebrated throughout as a paragon of virtue, albeit a somewhat flawed one, sung about and worshiped by the freedom school kids - yeah, nice humility, Tom. And of course, Laughlin's smug self-assurance that we'll agree with our heroes and their noxious political viewpoint is rather off-putting as well, but he gets around that problem - sort of.The politics are by their nature laughable, accepting and endorsing every bit of radical, leftist conspiracy jargon as concrete fact. But the way Laughlin paints the issues is what makes it truly offensive. He juxtaposes the film's climactic massacre with real life school shootings like Kent State, portraying them as premeditated acts of mass murder by the National Guard. The villains are bigoted, greedy, harrumphing straw-men, not even convincing as caricatures. Laughlin and Co. seem convinced that they're so important that they're being investigated by the FBI, CIA, and the US government at large for their "scorching exposes" (Laughlin would, in real-life, use this excuse for the failure of his later Billy Jack Goes to Washington). The journalist interviewing Jean repeats leftist conspiracy propaganda as known fact. The final massacre is so over-the-top, it's simultaneously appalling and laughable; the idea that someone would actually hold this viewpoint, however, is what's truly appalling here (although, not as laughable as believing that thousands of rounds fired by trained Guardsmen could only result in three deaths in a huge crowd).This is offensive, not because of the politics, but because of the dishonesty; it's easy to paint everyone opposed to you as a brutal, vicious Fascist, and thus (in theory, anyway) renders any possible argument against the film moot. Like, you can't dislike this movie unless you're a paid shill, Man. It's a childish argument, and it says a lot about Laughlin that it's his primary defense against criticism. And we STILL have the problem that Billy Jack is kicking ass is pretty much antithetical to the peace and love message we're supposed to be getting.Okay, the movie has some camp value. The lengthy Indian vision scenes - where Billy Jack confronts his "spirit double" and a cave full of demons - are pretty darn funny, in a trippy sort of way. A lot of the dialogue and acting is pathetically bad (I love the scene where a hippie suggests that the Freedom School "BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THEM!"). But is so pompously self-important throughout - and so LONG - that it isn't even enjoyable. Two hours in, you'll be pining for the original film, with the "epic" karate fight in the lawn, Howard Hesseman's rambling improv comedy, and, yes, Coven's camp classic "One Tin Soldier" - and you'll realize that there's still an hour to go! But overall, this is a film that even the biggest bad movie buff should be leery of approaching.0/10