Wow this is an awful movie

yes, i watched it yesterday as well.it just seems like a 70s drive in flick that would start about 1 a.m. i would have had enough beer by then and would have just headed home.

I guess I missed the scene where they passed out flowers and doobies and all their troubles disappeared. I even missed the part where all the straights were narrow-minded and stupid; I seem to recall a sheriff who was pretty cool.

As you've pointed out, the movie depicted its time well. I can see how hating yourself at that time would make watching this uncomfortable for you.

People rip on this movie for many reasons, and more often than not they make the mistake of judging it by today's standards. Funny how people get so exercised over a movie that's as much a period piece as "Beach Blanket Bingo".

So it must be more than that....this movie gets under people's craw because its idealism reaches people even today. Kind of impressive. Not even "Beach Blanket Bingo" can claim that kind of power. If you're the kind of person who puts "idealistic" and "crap" in the same sentence, yeah, put something else in the DVD player. Personally I can see it and feel great about that time. Great little story, and man, did it capture a spirit and time. To each his own.

This is one of the few movies I have seen more than once where I had the reaction of this is a great movie then saying the same thing as you on a 2nd viewing. The last time I saw it I accepted the movie on its terms, far from a great movie, flawed story telling with really amateurish acting. Personally, I would love to see a inspired remake updated addressing current political issues, a stronger script with more nuanced antagonists and good actors. Tom Hardy as Billy Jack, Emily Blunt as Jean Roberts come to mind as leads.

It was pretty simplistic for sure. But it was typical of the 70's drive in movies of that era. He did start the Kung Fu movement (other than Bruce Lee) in the movies.

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I agree, and just think about how much better off the country would be if everyone who thought life was about living in communes, not bathing, protesting military actions against oppressive communist invaders, and taking every drug within reach, had instead gotten a haircut and a job and allowed your own country to win a war.

I thought Billy Jack was cool at the time because it was unusual to see someone pop open a can of martial arts whoopass in the movies. Looking back it hasn't aged well at all. In fact prospective viewers would do well to avoid it and see the SNL spoof with larraine newman and singer Paul Simon instead.
"If only the world were more like this ice cream cone, with all the flavors getting along, Billy Jack wouldn't have to beat so many people up".

I know you are but what am I?

I thought you were going to say it was awful for tech reasons. I fell in with a bunch of film students, when I was in college, when this movie first came out, in '71. We went to the movie theater and they keep pointing out, to me, the different scenes where the boom mike keeping dropping into the scene and how the color values would change in the middle of a scene. And the scenes where you could see the crew or unaware people (not extras actors, just regular people) waking around in the background. I don't remember what scenes those are now (hey it's been 43 years) but they are there.

This is one of my top ten of worse movies ever. What's remarkable about this film was that it made a lot of money for Tom Laughlin, due to it's aggressive ad campaign. ("How many times have you seen Billy Jack?") that used to run on TV. This was back, (in a time far, far away) when movie theaters only had one screen and an individual movie only ran for one week (unless it was a special hit film, like the "Sound of Music" and then it ran for two weeks!).

The film was a real flop on its first run, but Laughlin (who wrote the screenplay, directed and produced the movie under the name T.C. Frank) would rent out theaters in certain areas of the country and run ads where they would asked teens and young adults "How many times have you seen Billy Jack?" and then show a series of people saying "23 times", "59 times" or "90 times"! It was some type of cultural fad where it became the thing to go see Billy Jack many times. I remember when I first the movie in '71 there were about a dozen people in a 200 seat theater. By '72 there were long lines of people waiting to see the movie. Believe me folks that movie was not that good!

Undoubtedly an awful mess. Had it been made in the 2000s it would have won an Mtv Award. That was the target audience--disaffected youth, anti-war, social change.

But taken as a whole, from Born Losers to Billy Jack Goes to Washington, it's a sub-genre: if and only if your peace sign fails may you employ deadly force, hapkido style, as a vigilante.

Walter Wink warns us in his trilogy of the "myth of redemptive violence" and nowhere else is it more accurately personified than in Billy Jack. He's willing to fight for peace, peace at all costs, peace at any price. The story works to convince you that sometimes you just have to put a man down. I know it's wrong but..."and this boy... that I love... sprawled out by this big ape here... and this little girl, who is so special to us we call her "God's little gift of sunshine"... and I think of the number of years that she's going to have to carry in her memory... the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours... I just go BERSERK!"