Maverick indie filmmaker and activist Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack gave the studio system a round-house kick to the face in 1971, with a cultural impact and financial success driven by Laughlin’s marketing genius that reverberates to this very day. A sequel to his biker-gang exploitation success Born Losers (1967), title character Billy Jack is back as the half-Cherokee Green Beret and Vietnam veteran. Though he’s a pacifist by nature, his peaceful warrior Zen state is disrupted when Native American students from the “hippie style” Freedom School, and its director Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor), are terrorized by a racist town heavy and his goons, causing Billy Jack to just “go berserk.” Clad in denim, Billy Jack’s rebel with a cause for revenge is the kind of anti-hero that helped define the 1970’s “new Hollywood” and made Billy Jack a counter culture icon.
