Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Historical Inaccuracies Galore, August 8, 2005
I saw this movie in late 1974 when it first came out. I noted the references to historical incidents such as the Kent State shooting, My Lai Massacre and Watergate among others. I did a lot of research on the claims made by Laughlin's movie and was appalled at the inaccuracies and down right lies.
I sent a long letter to Tom Laughlin's business Billy Jack Enterprises. He never answered me. That was 30 years ago. Now he has a website. I sent him an email version and he didn't answer that either.
In the beginning Jean (Delores Taylor) is being interviewed. She refers to Kent State (the May 4, 1970 shooting of 13 students at that university) and claims Attorney John Mitchell said there was no need to investigate the incident because he knew in advance the Guardsmen couldn't be responsible for the shooting. This is absolutely wrong. Mitchell never made that statement and the FBI was out at the campus the next day investigating.
Jean also said that even after fault was found on the part of he Guard "as usual Washington did nothing about it." Unbelievable, considering that when this movie was being made (in 1974) federal prosecutors indicted four guardsman!
In another part of the film, Billy Jack is referring to My Lai and all the "colonels and generals and White House aides who ordered the whole affair." White House aides? This is preposterous. (But it sounded sexy and intriguing during the Watergate era.) For the record, one lieutenant colonel ordered the offensive into the area and Lt. Calley himself ordered the massacre.
Moving on, Jean says about another situation, "I remember because [President] Ford had just shocked the nation by pardoning Nixon and agreeing to let him destroy the tapes." The second part is another untruth. Ford actually just gave Nixon partial control over access to the tapes, which were put in the custody of the General Services Administration in San Clemente. Nixon was given no authorization to destroy the tapes.
And then there is the issue of the "International Seminar on Child Abuse" which contains more nonsense. The movie makes Jean and the Freedom School look like they are the great enlightened champions of humane treatment of abusers and portrays the world of professional therapists as being in the Dark Ages.
A doctor says: "So in summary, you're saying that to love these people that we find dispicable, that we hate. And I can really hate these people that cut off the fingers of their children and beat their children. And that somehow in the experience of loving them, they're going to change before our eyes and stop beating their children?"
She isn't even sounding like a doctor, she's sounding like a cynical police officer. This is one of the more egregious misrepresentations in the film. In reality, the Freedom School's methods of treatment were the contemporary standards among mental health professionals at that time! (and still are)
In another part, an Indian spiritual guide told Billy that Kit Carson had 400 Navajo men, women and children rounded up and massacred in a cave. This is another fabrication. There is no record of Carson doing such a thing. What the scriptwriters could have mentioned is that some Spaniards committed such an atrocity. They rounded up some Indians in a section of Canyon de Chelley in northwestern Arizona and killed them in a cave in 1804. The cave is called "Massacre Cave" not "Cave of the Dead" (the movie phrase).
Also, the writers could have mentioned a factual outrage by Kit Carson, his "Trail of Tears" death marches of Indians in 1864 to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico.
There is more I could mention. Laughlin, as the main producer, was incredibly irresponsible with the script. No one should take the claims made in this movie seriously.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious!, February 6, 2001
By A Customer
One of my all-time favorite bad films! I first learned about it through Harry Medved's "50 worst movies of all time" book, and man, I was not dissapointed. You simply must see this incredible, camp classic. Who could possibly resist dialogue like: "You mean like when a kid's tripping out..or on a real bummer?" It's all here: the sobbing,earnest hippies babbling bromides--Delores welling up with tears--bad,bad,baaaaad "establishment" people kicking puppies--Delores welling up with tears--A Native-American named "Blue Elk"- Delores welling up with tears--and lots and lots of badly staged violence to insure a decent box-office return from the peace-loving teens. I say teens because no grown adult could possibly take this seriously...er..well...God, I hope not. Anyone who's ever read any of the humorous,egomaniacal ramblings of Tom Laughlin in interviews will have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this film, sanctimony on steroids. So, pull up a chair, kick off your Bierkenstocks, dig into that wheat germ and have a ball.*A word of caution: If you know anyone whose brain cells were permanently damaged by that really,potent windowpane acid in 69', and thinks Neil Young lyrics are deep, they may be in danger of taking this movie seriously. Be a friend and take their keys before they drive to the video store. The life you save may live to cure cancer some day.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A 174 minute lecture...., June 21, 2006
I was really intrigued by this film at first. I'm a sucker for a long running time (this is the uncut version, running 174 minutes), so I decided to check it out. It was actually one of the first films I ever rented from Netflix. Having seen the whole thing, I can safely say that I've seen it once, and once was enough. While there are some good scenes (some fight sequences are really good), the whole film is pedantic and preachy. The sequence where Billy Jack goes into the mountain, hallucinates and sees green men is unintentionally hilarious. The ending is also so ridiculously over melodramatic. Everyone gathers to sing "Give Peace a Chance", which is a great song. Unfortunately, here it ends up making you laugh more than anything else, which is a shame, as this scene comes right after a scene where national guardsmen shoot several students from Billy Jack's school. So, instead of feeling sympathy with Billy Jack, his students, and the faculty of the school, you end up laughing. That's not how you're supposed to feel. The Trial of Billy Jack is an extraordinarily preachy film, with political correctness coming out of every frame (before the words political correctness became famous). Even if you agree with some of the ideas (governments lie about war atrocities, the news media protects the government, etc., etc.), it hammers every point home so blatantly you end up just saying enough already. It makes one understand why the "silent majority" voted for Nixon in 1972. And with a megalong running time, the preachiness reaches epic proportions. If you have 3 hours to kill, and you want to see something mediocre, go for it. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and see anything else.
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