Fueled by a blank-check budget, a swollen ego to match and a huge ready-and-waiting audience,many a movie director with an enormous previous success has met their doom.......delivering a bloated, self-indulgent mess that only they and their loved ones could sit through......
The easiest comparison: enduring the 170 minutes of "The Trial Of Billy Jack" is akin to surviving the three George Lucas 'Star Wars' prequels or Spielberg's "1941".......(we're tempted to include Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate", but truth be told, we have a soft spot in our hearts for that one, which we'll deal with in a future post.....)
As a young actor throughout the 1950's, Laughlin struggled for bit parts.....you can spot him as the cocky pilot in "South Pacific" and one of the beach boys ogling Sandra Dee in "Gidget",
In the late 1960's, he emerged as a fiercely independent filmmaker, using a biker movie "Born Losers" to introduce his signature creation, Billy Jack, the taciturn, part Native American ex-Green Beret Vietnam vet......
Billy, as crafted and portrayed by the monotone-voiced, expressionless Laughlin. was the silent, proficiently deadly Western hero, now amped up and re-imagined to take on the strife of cultural and political chaos tearing the country apart. Seemingly peaceful and hoping to commune with the Universe, Billy Jack is incapable of turning the other cheek to injustice.....
And here's where we arrive at the skewed, much ridiculed duality of both Laughlin and his character, The promise of vengeful violence against his tormentors is the only thing that emotionally engages Billy Jack. As he performs an entertaining slow burn to pump up the audience, Billy's eyes light up and he grins happily as he prepares to reign down karate kicks that will shatter the kneecaps and crack the skulls of his enemies. (At times, he gleefully describes the extant of the physical injuries he's about to inflict on thugs who unwisely surround him. He can barely contain his anticipatory glee......)
Even with his minimalist acting and clumsy filmmaking skills, Laughlin successfully touched a raw nerve with a populace unsettled by the societal divisions caused by the never-ending Vietnam war and the darkening cloud of Richard Nixon in the White House......
He struck gold with his own self-financed re-release of 1971's "Billy Jack", in which Billy fights off bigots and bullies who attack the peace-loving teens of the 'Freedom School'.....an ultra-liberal, touchy-feely haven run by saintly, self-sacrificing Jean Roberts. (Laughlin's wife and filmmaking partner Delores Taylor)
Flush with box office cash and emboldened by his success, Lauglin unleashed "The Trial Of Billy Jack", his grand magnum opus.......which was basically the first "Billy Jack" film ballooned into mythic grandeur, deliriously righteous in its anger against the sinister, conspiratorial government and corporate Powers-That-Be and a guided tour through every American calamity imaginable. (The My Lai massacre, the Kent State massacre, the governmental rape of Native American lands and rights.....take your pick)
And in the release of the film itself, Laughlin revolutionized the entire film distribution system, putting the film immediately into a thousand theaters whose playing time he directly leased with flat fees, thereby keeping all the actual box office money instead of splitting any of it with the theaters. (Laughlin's wide release pattern, coupled with a massive avalanche of TV ads, eventually became the template adopted by all the major studios, starting with "Jaws", a year after this film was released.)
The film itself defies any reasonable, coherent description. On a holy mission to expose the violence and corruption of the times, Laughlin didn't even feel the need to use real actors, who might have given his scenes the melodramatic power he aimed for. He populated the movie with embarrassing amateurs, announcing their lines like toddlers at a grade school pageant. The assorted villains look like they were recruited while waiting in line at the supermarket.......when Laughlin and the haggard, weary, outraged Taylor rage at them, this bunch can only stare back at them blankly.
For lovers of cinematic lunacy, a treasure trove waits for you here. Delores Taylor's students conduct exposes of furniture and appliance stores, which earns them harassment from the FBI and CIA. Laughlin wanders through Arizona landscapes in search of his Native American spiritual bonding.......at one point, he's painted blue, resembling that addled Acidhead who so enraged Jack Webb on the legendary "Dragnet" episode. The town goons entertain elderly couples at a community dance by stripping and torturing a young Native American on the dance floor. And for the grand finale....... a student massacre by the National Guard, who've no qualms about plugging a little amputee tyke chasing after his pet bunny.
Need we go on?
All of this madness, we should point out, includes stunningly photographed scenery and an Elmer Bernstein score that heaves and swells at all the right moments........any professionalism on display in this film comes strictly from the music and camerwork. The rest of it would lead you to believe that maybe it was directed by Laughlin's then 19 year old son Frank.........whose name gets placed in the director's credit by his dad.
Laughlin went on to make the little seen "Billy Jack Goes To Washington".....(which we'll cover eventually.....it's just too painful to think about now...) But with this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink film, whatever you may think of it, he'd reached the peak of his art and his messaging......the last angry man left nothing out.
As a unique oddity and one-of-kind artifact of the 1970's, we put together at least 2 stars (**) for Laughlin's mighty, misbegotten epic........we wished he'd lived long enough to make one more Billy Jack movie.......in which Billy slyly grins as he explains to Donald Trump how an upcoming kung fu kick will drain the orange out of the President's face and send that yellow wig flying off into the Rose Garden bushes.......
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