- BILLY JACK BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)
The trend-setting smash hit that broke box office records and had audiences cheering! A half-Indian/half-white ex-Green Beret, Billy Jack is drawn more and more toward his Indian side. He hates violence but can’t get away from it in the white man’s world. Pitting the students of the peace-loving free-arts school in the desert against the oppressive bad guys in a nearby town, this action-packed film remains a landmark focusing on the most emotional themes of the time: anti-establishment, two-sided justice, and racial segregation and prejudice.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
Buy “Billy Jack “ For Only $11.46
March 10, 2008
#1
This could be one of the dumbest excuses for a film every to come out of Hollywood. Too bad they don’t have negative stars. I’d give it a -10
March 10, 2008
#2
This will mark the THIRD time Ventura Distribution has released “Billy Jack” on DVD. There is a standalone version, the one found on the “Billy Jack Collection”, and now this. (Warner also released the film on DVD, also flat screen and no extras.) The description above suggests a widescreen release, although with 4 movies (on 5 disks?!), I’m not yet convinced we won’t be seeing yet again another pan & scan release of this dated, but still collectable cult film. The VHS and laserdisc versions were also pan & scan — what the heck?! If this release in indeed the widescreen version, it will be the very first time the real version has been released on home video in any format. But here’s the catch: you have to drop somewhere in the ballpark of fifty bucks to get it. I guess if this ploy works, then Rhino will have the green light to release a second trilogy of the “Walking Tall” movies to finally escape their horrendous VHS dump on disk. (And Rhino’s already released that film pan & scan THREE times on DVD!) I just cannot reward studios with my money when they stoop to trickery such as this. I feel sorry for the poor suckers who bought the last Billy Jack box (since the Amazon details have no mention of widescreen). I already wasted my money on the Warner version, which I paid a fair price for, but got a gyp disk. I’ll just do without, thank you.
UPDATED NOTE: Pre-emptive strike here: My references to pan & scan are maybe misleading. I have no way of knowing the aspect ratio this film was shot in, even IMDb doesn’t say. But I saw this in the theater and the picture was not square, so the existing DVD’s of this film are “formatted to fit the screen” (my Warner disc begins with that disclaimer). Can’t people who hate letterboxed DVD’s just zoom in to lose the top/bottom bars? Let me guess…they don’t want to miss any of the picture. (sigh)
March 10, 2008
#3
And whats not to laugh at? Poorly directed, the dialouge is idiotic, and the message is a joke. I went to a private college that was pacafist, and pacafism does not denote naieve stupidity. This film has the most retarted message of any movie. But at least the action scenes are decent, even though his karate is not quite up to par.
March 11, 2008
#4
This movie is accounted “bad” because audiences want their violence all the way down, and are made uncomfortable by the juxtaposition, in the Billy Jack films, of ultraviolence with idealism and pacifism.
If we’re sitting in a theater, watching Chuck Norris “waste” (waste?) people, it is hard to be reminded that “another world is possible”. But this is precisely what Tom Laughlin does when he sees the face of the Indian child who’s been abused by the whites of the town, and speaks of its purity, and “just goes berserk”.
In a typical Chuckster film such as Walker, Texas Ranger, the audience is able to enjoy violence without guilt because Walker, or Rambo, is careful to legitimize his violence. The dinks, slopes, geeks and gemokes he “wastes” (wastes?) have no humanity and in the anonymous darkness of the theater, or of our apartment, we laugh mindlessly at their pain, in a way nobody, and I mean nobody, is permitted to even represent what happened to Americans on Sep 11 in Manhattan…lest audiences on the West Bank laugh at falling Yuppies.
Norris either associates it with a given authority (Walker, *** Texas Ranger ***) or like Rambo has a sponsor/father within an organization.
What is almost metaphysically frightening in the Billy Jack films, which I saw when they came out in 1971, is the truth.
This is the emergence of random, racist violence in the ordinary street.
Americans don’t want to face the role violence plays in their society: violence of men against women, whites against blacks, adults against children, and, internationally, Americans against the underdeveloped world.
Fashionable “man bites dog” semiotics reverse the polarity: but the standard polarities of men against women, whites against black, rich against poor, etc., comprise the roofbeams and rafters of society.
Billy Jack was a “bad” movie because it failed to reassure the audience that the violence that underlay social structures, in his movie, violence by Anglos against Indians, was OK.
It frightens an audience when an apparently white male like Billy Jack goes berserk not for some hidden authority but in purity of intent.
But somehow, old Tom Laughlin still rakes in royalties from the film because out there, people find him strangely attractive precisely to the extent he’s not some lone, crazed lunatic fighting battles on behalf of an uncaring Father.
There’s a lot of loose talk about how Hollywood sellout liberals rake in the bucks while being “progressive” but Tom Laughlin was a true progressive and he has been marginalized. Good for him.
The title song is apropos to an era of selfishness, greed and violence:
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
About a kingdom on a mountain,
And the valley folk below.
The mountain people had a treasure,
Buried underneath a stone.
The valley people sought that treasure,
Sought it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgement day.
On the bloody morning after…
One tin soldier rides away.
The valley people sent a message
To the kingdom on the hill,
Asking for that buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
The mountain people sent their answer,
“With our brothers we will share
All the riches of our mountain,
All the treasures buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day.
On the bloody morning after…
One tin soldier rides away.
The valley people cried in anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your swords!”
They killed all the mountain people,
So they earned their just rewards.
As they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain dark and red,
They turned the stone and looked beneath it.
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day.
On the bloody morning after…
One tin soldier rides away.
March 11, 2008
#5
That any one would feel “pity” for someone who bought the movie for themselves or “contempt” for someone who bought it as a gift seems an “overipe” response. It’s a movie. It’s an outdated 70′s flick that was hugely popular at the time and despite its antiquated sentiments, advocates some simple values that, even in a cheaply made and corny film, are not to be despised. Ideals presented like pacifism, Native American spiritualism and pride, freedom of expression, and animal activism stand in preachy contrast to depictions of racism, bigotry, and violence. But just because they’re presented in goofy hippy slang and beads or in a cheaply made film, doesn’t mean such ideals and condemnations are not worth advocating. The conflict between Billy Jack’s violence and Jean’s pacifism goes a lot deeper than just demonstrating Loughlin’s martial arts skill. I think the film’s also an amusing peak back into an era. IT’s not for nothing the film was popular. I think a lot of young people during that period believed in the ideals the film pushes. My students view it and get a huge kick over the preachy messages, corny songs, “don’t hassle me man” slang, not to mention the obvious and crudely [done] fight scenes. All in all, certainly not a film to be offended by, and certainly not a film to get worked-up over. Those who take offense to its depicition of violence are most likely still living in 1971.