Rating: 
Summary: 5 stars back in '71; now...well...
Review: Poor Bernard. Yes, he had the baZERK coming to him in the ice cream parlor. But Billy and Jean should have tried to reach out to him afterwards and get him into the freedom school for "outcasts" since his father was so mean to him. After all, he didn't really want to shoot the horsies. But the plot writer never gave the poor guy a chance to turn good.
By the way, you youngsters, that fight scene in the park was one of the BEST karate scenes filmed to date at that time!!!
I rented this movie recently and am embarrassed at the fact that it was 1 of my 2 all-time favorites for so many years. It's completely silly to me now. But I'm giving it 5 stars for old time's sake and to remind me of how goofy I used to be for loving it.
Rating:
Summary: Five star movie and a five star DVD!!!
Review: This great DVD of the classic film Billy Jack is a real treat!!! The full-frame transfer of the film is top notch!!! A great DVD for the price!!! A seventies classic!!! Two thumbs up!!! 5 stars!!! A+
Rating: 
Summary: A hero for the 1970s generation
Review: I don't know what it is about the 1971 hippie/action film "Billy Jack" that creates such overwhelming division of feverish opinion. One either hates it or loves it, but rarely does the opinion rest between. I remember seeing this film as a child during its infamous re-release in 1973 and was a bit confused as to what the fuss was about. After repeated viewings over the years, I think I can now offer my take.I think most importantly, Tom Laughlin makes an extraordinarily appealing action hero. Sure he poses and broods and delivers lines of pseudo shaman wisdom through gritted teeth, but not since Clint Eastwood in those spaghetti westerns has an action hero had so much presence on screen. I really like Laughlin's performance - the key as to why "Billy Jack" became one of the greatest independent successes in history. The irony is had Laughlin carved out an acting career over the years (he's only starred in about five films since "Billy Jack"), he could have been a better actor than Eastwood. His monlogue with real-life wife Delores Taylor when discussing America, the Kennedys, etc....is very, very good. It is an earnest performance wrought with presence and charisma. I also applaud Delores Taylor for her heartbreaking performance. As the dean of the Freedom School of society castoffs located in some small town in the southwest (New Mexico?), she gives a strikingly profound portrayal. As an eventual victim of rape, her scene where she discusses the horrible violation is one of the finest moments dealing with such trauma in screen history. Yes, I know, several critics have pointed this out, but it is an unforgettable scene. It's a shame Taylor didn't continue to forge her craft, as she only starred in two films after "Billy Jack." I think the villains are poorly realized, most specifically the son of local bigwig Posner (David Roya). He's bullied and humiliated by his father, and eventually takes his frustrations out on the students of the Freedom School as a way to gain approval. So for him to meet such a grotesque end is pure "B" movie justice. This character's demise leaves a bad taste. I am also uncomfortable with the prolonged humiliation of Taylor prior to her rape. In fact, many women are humiliated in this film in such a way that could only be termed exploitative. And one could go on about the low budget quality, the mediocre editing, the poor supporting performances. People complain about the film's title song, Coven's "One Tin Soldier," which is played at the beginning and end of "Billy Jack." I happen to like this extremely vibrant tune, and think it had much to do with why "Billy Jack" struck such an emotional chord with audiences. I also think the action sequences, most famously the town square battle between Billy Jack and about 10-15 townspeople who seem to magically appear from behind trees, are well choregraphed and exciting. Quite simply, "Billy Jack" is a modern-day, New Age variation on "Shane." You have a scarred warrior/gunfighter adorned in buckskins riding down from the hills to protect innocent townsfolk from corrupt businessmen/authorities. The final shootout, in both cases, has the warrior wounded and bleeding, only to ride off into the sunset after sacrificing himself for the sake of the townsfolk/school children. While in "Shane," Alan Ladd rides back up into the mountains with a child crying his name, in "Billy Jack," Tom Laughlin rides into the sunset, handcuffed in the back of a police car. The children line the road, fists held skywards in a silent salute. It's a story as old as the hills, but for the flower power generation, "Billy Jack" was their Shane. He was a hippie hero for the masses, scarred by the Vietnam war, pissed at the world, wanting to deliver a very well-timed hapkido kick into the stomach of a corrupt system. Why wouldn't 1971 audiences flock to see this film? During times of frustration, we all like to imagine a hero like Billy Jack/Shane riding down out of the hills to protect us from the corrupt "they" of the world. It's a fantasy that exists in today in the form of indestructible superheroes like Batman and Wolverine. They say producers have offered Tom Laughlin the bank to remake "Billy Jack." To date, he has refused. It's probably a wise decision. The film is such a product of its time, I just don't see how the story could work for today's audiences.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-Intentioned but Corny (even then)
Review: It's all been said by the reviewers who excoriate the film's pretentious hippie-ness, it's paternalistic treatment of Indians, and all the other stuff. As it is, it's more an interesting historical curiosity than timeless literature, for sure. I remember that time, though, as one of young ignorant but truth-seeking kids trying to create a new story to supplant the old one of "the only good Indian (Commie) is a dead Indian (Commie)." The result reminds me of Peter Fonda's stupid pretentiousness in "Easy Rider" when he says, gazing on the absurd hippies scrabbling around ineffectually in the dirt on their commune trying to grow food, that "yep, I think they're going to make it," or something like that. This film, too, makes everything so unbelievable that it fails to show anything that might be taken seriously as a criticism of American culture. But it tried...and that's what people then (and I guess now) responded to (like rightwingers, many lefties are also slaves to dogma, which devours humor and leaves...stupidity). The story needs some major reworking--for one thing the idea of some savior that comes to make things right is just a little old, don't you think? With major rethinking of the story, a little editing (which is awful) and cutting out some of the more stupid lines, it might have been a fair film. Remake anyone? (Joking!!!)
Rating: 
Summary: A "hippie" western
Review: There are a lot of people who consider the late 1960s and early 1970s to be a great era in movie making, with such ground-breaking films as Bonnie and Clyde, the Godfather and Easy Rider leading the way. Billy Jack is proof that even during this era there were still lousy movies being made. Esssentially, a counter-culture modern day western, the movie deals with the title character, a stoic war veteran who is half-Indian and lives a solitary life on a reservation, occasionally appearing to help the people of the Freedom School, an alternative sort of campus run by a teacher who Billy secretly loves. The local townspeople, led by the corrupt man who owns most of the town, are generally intolerant and fearful of these strange students, occasionally resorting to violence, at which time Billy Jack intervenes. Even taking into consideration that this film is extremely dated, it has little to recommend it. The acting and writing are poor, the villains are one-dimensional (the remaining characters are hardly less so) and the fight scenes are infrequent and not all that exciting. There are long, boring scenes glorifying either the hippie or Indian lifestyle, which are not only tedious, but smugly self-righteous. There are a couple minor good features in the film. The sheriff is the only character who is not a pure stereotype, so he is mildly interesting. Also, Howard Hesseman, uncredited in an early role does a decent enough job; it is little surprise that he's the only person to emerge from this film with any sort of successful acting career. I have a lot of praise for the ending, too: while it is ludicrous that the climatic scene would turn out the way it does, I still liked the ending, merely because it meant that this awful movie was over and I could go on to better things in my life.
Rating:
Summary: Dated and Pretentious, but Possessed of a Certain Charm
Review: I remember seeing this film three times (in an 800-seat theater, the sort that barely exist anymore) when it was re-released around 1973. It fired my 14-year-old imagination, notwithstanding the fact that I was never of a particularly liberal bent, and thus I couldn't resist buying the DVD recently when I found it ... It's an especially clunky piece of filmmaking, even by early-70s exploitation-film standards. Much as Francis Ford Coppola did with his daughter in The Godfather Part III, Tom Laughlin used this film as an excuse to get his wife and daughter on the big screen, and the production suffers mightily for it. I also have to laugh at the quaint notion of having a "school" for troubled young people, in which nary an academic subject is broached, but all are encouraged to "create" something, as if that were going to fit them for doing something useful with their adult lives. However, the film retains just enough of an edge to remind me of the naively idealistic teenager I once was. Billy Jack was as much a superhero to my generation as was Superman and Batman, wiping out hordes of evil rednecks with a single roundhouse kick. The movie hasn't aged gracefully, but the feelings it evoked in me have mellowed nicely in my memory.
Rating:
Summary: The Most important film ever made!
Review: Billy Jack was a half-breed-and they NEVER let him foget it. He couldn't change the world-but he made his people stand tall! The greatest love story of all time. Billy Jacks love for a woman. Billy Jacks love for the children at the school he protects. Billy Jacks love for a race of people abused for 100's of years by the government and society. He sacrificed himself so the people he loved could live in peace! Watch this one with your children to teach them about racisim and to never tolerate it. The ice-cream parlor scene says it all!
Rating:
Summary: Didn't Really Work For Me
Review: After I saw this film I tried that thing where you take your shoes off when you're going to fight somebody, and the guy stepped on my toes with his boot and then he kicked my derriere into next week.
Rating:
Summary: Preachy Hypocritical New Age Nonsense Pretending 2 be Indian
Review: Now I remember why so many of my parents friends protested against this movie when it came out. They were proud of the role they played in making sure the second Bill Jack movie bombed. Most Indians then and now can't stand this racist movie.
1)It's insulting in the way it recasts Indians to fit new and Age and hippie fantasies of what they WISH we were like.
2)It's downright ignorant in its view of Indian religions. Worse yet, you have a preachy blond white woman pretending to teach an Indian character his own religion. (Actually, what they show as Indian religion is Southern Holy Roller Snake Charming-yes, it really is THAT ridiculous.)
3)Yes, believe it or not, they have a WHITE guy playing an Indian. Tom Laughlin thinks all he ahs to do to "pass" as Indian is squint and wear a feather in his cap. Sorry Tom, didn't work for yankee doodle, won't work for you. White guys playing Indians on film IS racism. The whole let's-love-everyone bit comes off as phony and hypocritical.
4)And let's not forget this movie was based on the (alleged) life of a New Age leader who impersonated being an Indian medicine man. John "Rolling Thunder" Pope's lies were as ridiculous in this film as anywhere else. Like another reviewer said, I'm just sorry this rating system won't let me give it ZERO stars. One of the WORST movies allegedly about Indians ever made!
Rating:
Summary: The sum of the 60's for some?And A Confused Time Capsule!
Review: I saw this movie 30 years ago in the movies on the big screen, before multi-plex theatres. It seemed larger than life and obviously righteous. Now, as a mature man, I question the whole idea of a "Billy Jack" as a hero, anti-hero or anything. He seems self-destructive in retrospect to the point that the events of the movie could never have happened in the first place. Having said that, while I enjoyed the movie from an entertainment standpoint, I knew the movie suffered from many structural flaws, not the least of which was the lack of an ominous villian. No Darth Vador or Liberty Valence here. Instead, a father and son who illegally shoot horses in the Indian Reservation that Billy Jack policed, for dog food [.06 lb]and an abusive father who happens to be a Deputy Sheriff [Kenneth Toby]who is a minion of Mr. Horsemeat, with a pregnant 15 year old daughter that Billy Jack has given refuge to will have to surfice. Just think of how many action features fail because of a weak villain lacking in pathos. Anyone recall the "Return of the Seven"? Lorca was the villain and who cares?
I did say I liked this movie and I did and I still do, but while I applauded the characters for their principles and the courage of their convictions 30 years ago, today I see it as a confused but entertaining time capsule that summed up the 1960s in its own way. Today I enjoy the movie more for its spectacle value than its ideology, but I do recall that I believed in some of what I saw when it was first released though what exactly that might be would be a guess at this point. It was fun telling my wife who is 15 years my Junior that,"before their was Dirty Harry or Steven Seagal there was "Billy Jack" to which she just nodded with the same confused look I must have felt when I watched the film again after 30 years. I was wondering now if 6 cents a pound was enough money to be an incentive to hunt, catch and process wild stallions into dog food? Rated PG, I was surprised that frontal nudity and a couple of other graphic scenes were included but it is still 3 STARS, certainly worth watching, but once should do it for most.
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