The Trial of Billy Jack (1974)

User Rating:

4.3/10   

Director:

Tom Laughlin

Writers:

Tom Laughlin (writer)
Delores Taylor (writer)

Release Date:

13 November 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Music | Thriller

Tagline:

It takes up where Billy Jack left off

Plot:

After Billy Jack in sentenced to four years in prison for the "involuntary manslaughter" of the first film...

Plot Keywords:

School | Student | Prison | Freedom | Governor

Cast

Tom Laughlin	...	Billy Jack
Delores Taylor	...	Jean Roberts
Victor Izay	...	Doc
Teresa Kelly	...	Carol (as Teresa Laughlin)
Russell Lane	...	Russell
Geo Anne Sosa	...	Joanne
Lynn Baker	...	Lynn
Riley Hill	...	Posner
Sparky Watt	...	Sheriff Cole
Gus Greymountain	...	Blue Elk
Sacheen Littlefeather	...	Patsy Littlejohn
Michael Bolland	...	Danny
Jack Stanley	...	Grandfather
Bong Soo Han	...	Master Han
Rolling Thunder	...	Thunder Mountain

Runtime:

170 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono | 4-Track Stereo

Certification:

Sweden:15 | USA:PG | South Africa:(Banned)

Filming Locations:

Bandelier National Monument - 15 Entrance Road, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA

Company:

Taylor-Laughlin Productions

Trivia:

A few months before the release of the film, a potential disaster threatened the success of the release. In "Variety", director/star/writer Laughlin read the news that the executives in charge of the film's distribution, Lou Marx (who was once a top executive at MGM during the studio's golden days) and Roger Reese (who was almost single-handedly responsible for the original film's financial success) had suddenly quit, and they had done it during a press conference at the National Association of Theater Owners convention in Atlanta, the biggest event of the year for the nation's theater owners. The reason they had quit, they announced, was that Laughlin had changed the deal and was now refusing to give distributors the picture without a cash advance. Laughlin regarded it as an outright lie. With this development, Laughlin and wife Delores Taylor knew that their film would be denied exhibition in each of the 1,200 theaters that agreed to show it. The problem was resolved and the film went on to become one of the top money-makers of 1974.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: There is a scene in which the Freedom School kids are watching a Freedom School TV interview with Posner on a television atop a tower of equipment. The interview footage had been grafted onto the larger image. In one shot, when the camera pans, the grafted interview footage moves completely off of the TV set and into another part of the shot, then back onto the (originally white-noised) TV screen.

Quotes:

Billy Jack: [surrounded by an angry mob] If there is absolutely no way you can get out of taking a terrible beating, the only sensible thing to do is, get in the first lick!

Movie Connections:

Featured in Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 4 (1997) (V)

Soundtrack:

The Theme from 'The Trial of Billy Jack'

A real trial to sit through.

I saw this many years ago when it first came out. I had previously enjoyed BILLY JACK for what it was, an interesting little action picture with a leftist political conscience. So I thought I knew what to expect with this one.

But nothing prepared me for the sheer, mind-boggling bombast of auteur Tom Laughlin's magnum opus. The simplistic political ideas he espouses in this example of wretched excess make Michael Moore and Leni Reifenstahl look like amateurs.

You know the old joke about how you have to get the mule's attention by first clobbering him over the head with a two-by-four? Well, Laughlin feels the necessity to pound that poor mule right into the ground with a pile driver until it's in a hole so deep you can see China on the other side. Subtlety, ambiguity, ambivalence, even the possibility of their being two sides to any issue are concepts that have no place in his universe.

If you're the type who believes that the world is a place of Black and White, Good and Evil, with zero shading between, then you may be able to stomach this film. But let all others beware.