The Born Losers (1967)

Sorry, this movie sucks

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

So on the evening on 5/11/15 across America much of the country's senior population settled in after dinner at 8/7PM to TCM to enjoy a movie. Perhaps a frothy Esther Williams vehicle, or a Gene Kelly musical or maybe some 1940's film noir with Alan Ladd. I can only imagine the reactions when they discovered their favorite movie channel was showing 2 hours of mayhem, featuring brutal violence and gang rapes as a motorcycle gang, "The Born Losers" terrorize a California town in this 1967 classic of the biker flick genre. No complaints here, I know they've shown this very late at night before, not sure if they've ran it in prime time but one thing I love about TCM is the variety in showing films rarely seen elsewhere.AIP did a great job of gaging the pulse of the young film goers in the 50's through the early 70's. In the 50's they had rock n roll and juvenile delinquent movies, and in the early and middle 60's they had all the silly Frankie & Annette beach comedies. By 1967 they had ran their course and AIP went to edgier stuff, with biker and drug flicks, cheaply made stuff for drive-in's and a teenage audience. "Born Losers" is notable for the introduction of the Billy Jack character. The sequel, the pretentious and heavy handed "Billy Jack" received much more attention and was more successful and would spawn one more sequel, the truly dreadful "Trial of Billy Jack" which I must admit, I've never been able to sit through entirely. However, the most compelling character in BL isn't Tom Laughlin as Billy Jack, but screen veteran Jeremy Slate as Danny Carmody, the leader of the biker gang. Slate actually brings a touch of humor (like wearing goofy white sunglasses that look like they were ripped off an old lady) to an otherwise repulsive thug and in my book does a superior of more believable job of playing a biker gang boss than Brando did in "The Wild One." Also notable is the great Jane Russell, in a small part as a washed out alcoholic mom of a girl who fell in the bikers. Now in her mid-40's, time hadn't been too kind to the gal who was a sex goddess in the 40's and 50's with a spectacular figure. As with all AIP films, much of it is unintentionally hilarious and lousy. Fun to watch though and thinking about, maybe it's not a bad call for TCM to run it in prime time, considering the original target for this is now between 60 and 70.

I saw this film with friends and family in the theater when it 1st came out. My friend loved the soundtrack so much he bought the album. Elizabeth James, aka "Vicky," was a real "hottie." She was smooching all over Billy Jack at the end of the film. We were originally informed that Billy was an "ex-Green Beret." Now before I go any further I just want to say that I still like the film but in a different way than before. Fast Forward to the 2nd film, "Billy Jack." Both California and Vicky have disappeared without an explanation. However Billy's new love interest seems to be his real life wife Delores Taylor, who stays on in the next 2 movies as well. (Hmmm...) We still enjoyed watching Billy kick Mr. Posner in the head though. (Continued in the Billy Jack section)

Tom Laughlin created an interesting character here, although he doesn't really have the physical complexion of a Native American, and is the most civilized and essential part of this film.There is a cameo scene with Jane Russell as the traumatized mother (her daughter has been raped by the gang). The California bike gang includes such characters as "Gangrene" and "Crabs" clearly people who are on the lunatic fringe, and will not be missed in the world.While it's campy and obvious at times, for its time this was a fun endeavor at delineating societal issues and conflicts. Albeit a bit veiled and mild in its messages of discrimination, it's acceptable for a fun Saturday night flick. 7/10.

Given its low budget, this is not a bad movie. A motorcycle gang, led by the scruffy Jeremy Slate, terrorizes a small California town, and in the process rapes several college girls. There's lots of tough talk, motorcycle noise, and violence, as you would expect for a biker film.Of course, to balance out all the villainous mayhem, you gotta have a hero on the scene. And for the era in which the film was made, there was no better hero than the charismatic loner, half-breed Billy Jack, played with serene gusto by Tom Laughlin. He's a one-man show of moral and physical strength, as he outwits and outfights the biker roughnecks. The film makes the point that bad parenting and ineptness in traditional law enforcement foster an environment conducive to delinquency.Interestingly, although this is the first Billy Jack film, Laughlin played a similar role ten years earlier, in a movie called "The Delinquents" (1957). His character was Scotty, a good guy teenager who gets mixed up with a bunch of high school hoodlums. Whereas in "The Delinquents" all the villains are kids who drive around in jalopies, in "The Born Losers", the kids have grown into adults who ride motorcycles.In "The Born Losers" the characters tend to be stereotypes. In a time period that immediately preceded the women's lib movement, the film's female characters are very, very subservient. The film's plot does depend on contrivances to some extent. Dialogue lacks subtext. Production design is ... colorful. And the costumes reek of late 60's garish "hip" (love those pink walls and pink clothes), all perfectly in sync with the Age of Aquarius. Tom Laughlin's direction is excellent. Color cinematography is very good. The outdoor scenery is wonderful, as is the music in the opening title sequence.I've seen a number of biker films. "The Born Losers" is one of the best. It was highly successful at the box office, and led to later Billy Jack films. It has a cinematic style that is almost iconoclastic; not insignificantly, it preceded "Easy Rider" by a couple of years. Such was the impact of "The Born Losers".