The Trial of Billy Jack

The Trial of Billy Jack is a 1974 Western action film starring Delores Taylor and Tom Laughlin. It is the sequel to the 1971 film, Billy Jack, and the third film overall in the series.[2]

The Trial of Billy Jack
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTom Laughlin
Produced byJoe Cramer
Written byFrank Christina
Teresa Christina
(pen names for Tom Laughlin and Delores Taylor)
StarringDelores Taylor
Tom Laughlin
Music byElmer Bernstein
CinematographyJack A. Marta
Edited byMichael Economou
George Grenville
Michael Kahn
Michael Karr
Jules Nayfack
Tom Rolf
Toni Rolf
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Taylor-Laughlin
Release date
  • November 13, 1974 (1974-11-13)
Running time
170 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2.5 million
Box office$89 million[1]

Directed by Laughlin, it has a running time of nearly three hours. Although commercially successful, it was panned by critics. The film was included as one of the choices in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.[3]

Plot

Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) goes to court facing an involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from events in the earlier film. He is found guilty and sentenced to a prison term. Meanwhile, the kids at the Freedom School—an experimental school for runaways and troubled youth on a Native American reservation in Arizona—vow to rebuild the school. They raise funds and acquire a new building, eventually starting their own newspaper and television station.

Inspired by Nader's Raiders, they begin using the newspaper and TV station to conduct investigative reporting, angering several politicians and townspeople in the process with their exposés.

The school's activities range from having their own search and rescue team, to artistic endeavors such as a marching band and belly dancing. This culminates with the school hosting a large marching band contest and arts festival, which they call "1984 is Closer Than You Think", to raise money for the school.

Midway through the film, Billy Jack is released from prison and, trying to reconnect with his spiritual beliefs, begins a series of lengthy vision quests. He gets involved in a radical group on the reservation which is trying to oppose the federal de-recognition of their tribe and the turning of their tribal lands over to local developers. When one of the tribal members is arrested for poaching deer on what was formerly tribal land, the school comes to his defense.

The school begins to hold hearings on Native rights and child abuse. One of the children at the school was abused by his father who cut off his hand in a fit of rage, and the school defies a court order to turn the boy back over to his father. The FBI begins visiting the school and taps their phones.

As tensions mount between the school and the people in the nearby town, a mysterious explosion at the school knocks their television station off the air. The governor calls a state of emergency and mobilizes the National Guard, and a curfew is established in town. The students respond by holding a parade in the town in violation of the curfew. On the way back to the school their bus breaks down and local townspeople confront the students and threaten to set their bus on fire.

Billy Jack shows up during the incident to protect the students, and then comes to the rescue of a tribal member who is being harassed and beaten at a local dance in town. Near the end of the film, the National Guard is stationed around the school and is ordered to open fire on the students, killing four and wounding hundreds more.

The entire story is told in flashbacks by Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor, Laughlin's real-life wife), a teacher at the school, from her hospital bed after the shooting incident. The violence in the finale is a symbolic bookend to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians seen in the beginning of the film. During Billy's trial, he mentions the 1968 My Lai massacre and recalls, in a flashback scene, witnessing a similar incident while serving in Vietnam.

Cast

Production

Part of the film was shot in Monument Valley in Utah.[4]

Reception

Box office

According to Variety by 1976 the film had earned $6,716,000 in theatrical rentals in North America.[5] Its international take was very small, which Laughlin suggested was due to U.S. government agencies conspiring to get the film "banned in almost every country in the world" to hide its "scorching exposés" from foreign audiences, though he indicated he had no evidence.[6][7]

Critical

The film was a commercial success upon its release in theaters, but met with a harsh reaction from movie critics.[3][8]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "three hours of naiveté merchandised and marketed with the not-so-innocent vengeance that I associate with religious movements that take leases on places like the Houston Astrodome."[8] Variety wrote that the film was "badly in need of trimming its 170-minutes running time" and that Laughlin sometimes seemed to be "only a visiting guest star, since he does not figure in what seems to be reels of irrelevant school action. It is only when he is on-camera that the picture picks up, a commanding figure whose low-key characterization adds to the brilliance of his performance."[9] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1 star out of 4 and called it "gross, misleading and a run-on bore," writing that "whereas the original had moments of genuine humor and refreshing improvisation, 'The Trial of Billy Jack' comes on as totally committed to establishing half-truths. In reality, both My Lai and Kent State are testaments to the danger of arming young men and placing them in combat situations. But 'The Trial of Billy Jack' twists those facts so as to make the killings a direct policy statement of the national government."[10] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times described it as "one of the longest, slowest, most pretentious and self-congratulatory ego trips ever put to film. The running time is an excruciating three hours, which make you wonder what the five count 'em five credited editors did for their pay."[11] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "such a rambling, maudlin, sanctimonious rehash of its phenomenally successful predecessor that one can at least hope for a few defections among the legions of young fans who evidently thrilled to the self-flattering gospel according to 'Billy Jack,'" concluding, "Laughlin's point of view may be militantly liberal, but his artistic methods are reactionary in the extreme."[12] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker declared, "This film probably represents the most extraordinary display of sanctimonious self-aggrandizement the screen has ever known."[13] Donald J. Mayerson wrote in Cue, "this sequel proved more of a trial for me than it was for Billy."[3] Leonard Maltin's film guide assigned its lowest possible grade of BOMB and called the film "Laughable" until the final massacre scene that rendered its peaceful message "ludicrous."[14]

In a retrospective review Donald Guarisco of AllMovie wrote: "Ultimately, most viewers are likely to be baffled by The Trial of Billy Jack, and it can only be recommended to B-movie fans with a hearty constitution...it's a mess, but it's a fascinating mess".[15]

When the film was re-issued for another theatrical run in the spring of 1975, an accompanying newspaper ad campaign attacked critics as being out of touch with the tastes of mass audiences.[16][17]

Despite its initial commercial success, it marked the effective end of success for the Billy Jack series.

It was followed by another film, Billy Jack Goes to Washington in 1977, which never saw widespread theatrical release. A fifth movie, The Return of Billy Jack filmed in 1985-86, was never completed and remains unreleased. The Trial of Billy Jack was included as one of the choices in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.[3]

gollark: "Only" three weeks?
gollark: It's 50 now, though! Even better.
gollark: Ah, of course, silly me.
gollark: Taako: they've had long enough and it'd not take long.
gollark: This is why I suspect it's a social experiment.

See also

References
  1. "The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) – Financial Information". the-numbers.com.
  2. Waxman, Sharon (June 20, 2005). "Billy Jack Is Ready to Fight the Good Fight Again". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-01-02.
  3. Medved, Harry; Dreyfuss, Randy (1978). The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time. Popular Library. pp. 255–256. ISBN 0-445-04139-0.
  4. D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 9781423605874.
  5. "All-time Film Rental Champs", Variety, 7 January 1976, pg 44.
  6. Medved and Dreyfuss, p. 260.
  7. "The Trial of Billy Jack - History". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved December 3, 2018.
  8. Canby, Vincent (November 14, 1974). "Screen: 'Trial of Billy Jack,' a Sequel". The New York Times: 58.
  9. "Film Reviews: The Trial Of Billy Jack". Variety. November 13, 1974. 18.
  10. Siskel, Gene (November 25, 1974). "Trial of Billy Jack". Chicago Tribune. Section 4, p. 17.
  11. Champlin, Charles (November 13, 1974). "A 'Billy Jack' Marathon". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.
  12. Arnold, Gary (November 15, 1974). "The Trial of Billy Jack" The Washington Post. B1, B13.
  13. Kael, Pauline (November 25, 1974). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 180.
  14. Maltin, Leonard, ed. (1995). Leonard Maltin's 1996 Movie & Video Guide. Signet. p. 1370. ISBN 0-451-18505-6.
  15. Guarisco, Donald. "The Trial of Billy Jack". AllMovie. Retrieved December 3, 2018.
  16. "'Billy Jack' vs. Critics". Variety. April 30, 1975. p. 5.
  17. "'Jack' Again Using Anti-Critic Ads". Variety. May 21, 1975. p. 7.
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