The Trial Of Billy Jack

Year releasted: 1974

by Keith Phipps
March 5th, 2003

Action movies are full of cocky protagonists who initiate epic displays of death and destruction, but few are brave enough to explore the legal ramifications of vengeance. In 1974, The Trial Of Billy Jack proved the rare exception. As the film opens, the titular peace-loving ass-kicker (Tom Laughlin) is in hot water for killing an evil redneck while protecting schoolmarm Delores Taylor's free-thinking Freedom School. Alas, the violence at the Freedom School is part of a disturbing nationwide trend in which "students are slaughtered by trigger-happy police types and nothing is ever done about it," as Taylor tells reporters early in the film. Laughlin delivers an even more stinging attack on America's corrupt power structure from the witness stand, where he philosophizes on the nature of death, recounts his bold stance against the senseless slaughter of women, children, and old men during Vietnam, and accuses President Nixon of being a "mealy-mouthed, sellout politician." Laughlin's bold stand lands him 5 to 15 years in the slammer, where he becomes a symbol for all that is right in the world. The authorities can lock up Laughlin, but they can't stamp out the ideas he espouses. While he rots away in prison, the Freedom School morphs into a city unto itself, complete with a recording studio, television station, muckraking newspaper, donkey rides for abused children, and classes covering meditation, body awareness, dance, and a sport ominously known as "yoga football." The powers that be, eager to keep yoga football under wraps, first bug the school, then bomb it, following a series of exposés by student reporters. Upon being released from prison, Laughlin forgoes food and water, takes an "inward journey," and visits the festively named Cave Of The Dead, where he encounters bats, snakes, the fearsome Red Devil, and his blue-face-paint-wearing doppelgänger. When Laughlin returns to the Freedom School, the students urge him to condone violent retaliation, and he advises them that violence solves nothing, his experiences in The Born Losers and Billy Jack notwithstanding. Heeding Laughlin's counsel, the students propose a gay-sounding event called "The Total Man Meet," which will combine belly-dancing, poetry, rock 'n' roll, sprinting, pole vaulting, and relay races. The government and townspeople want nothing to do with it, and they crack down on the students by breaking their instruments and having a militia occupy the school. The Trial Of Billy Jack climaxes with yet another school shooting, as the militia fires into a peaceful crowd, killing, among others, a one-handed moppet who'd earlier played a Christmas song with his metallic claw. An interminable rendition of "Give Peace A Chance" ends the film–and with it, the once-promising career of its writer, producer, director, and star–a mere 171 minutes after it began.