Billy Jack (1971) on Netflix
Billy Jack, a mixed-race Navajo and Green Beret veteran, protects a desert Freedom School for runaways. Men from a nearby town herd wild mustangs to be slaughtered as dog food.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.2/107,157 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
Runaway students find shelter at the Freedom School, a desert school run by Jean Roberts, with Billy Jack, a mixed-race Navajo and Green Beret veteran, as its protector. Men from a nearby town drive wild mustangs into a pen to be slaughtered as dog food; Billy Jack threatens them with a rifle and they free the horses. Sheriff Cole brings Barbara, a pregnant teenage runaway, back to her father, Deputy Mike, and Mike punches her in the face. Barbara flees to the town doctor, who with the sheriff arranges for her to stay at the school in secret. Barbara is at first uncomfortable there; Jean urges her into improvisational theater, and she befriends Martin, a Native American student.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Billy Jack (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- American International Pictures pulled out during filming, halting production; 20th Century Fox came forward and shooting resumed, but that studio then refused to distribute the film. Warner Bros. stepped forward, and even so the film lacked distribution, so Laughlin booked it into theaters himself in 1971.
- Billy Jack grossed $10 million in its initial run, but eventually added close to $50 million in a re-release, with distribution supervised by Laughlin himself.
- The film's theme song "One Tin Soldier", a cover of a track by Canadian band The Original Caste, was recorded by Jinx Dawson of the band Coven; a re-recording renamed "One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack)" became a Top 40 hit in 1971 and again in 1973.
- In 2019 it was revealed that writer-director Quentin Tarantino and actor Brad Pitt used the film and Laughlin's performance as an influence while developing Pitt's character Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
- Film critic Leonard Maltin at first gave Billy Jack 3.5 stars out of 4, calling it uneven in spots but tremendously powerful, then downgraded it to 1.5 stars, writing that its message of peace "looks ridiculous, considering the amount of violence in the film".
- Delores Taylor received a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcoming Actress, and Tom Laughlin won the grand prize for Billy Jack at the 1971 Taormina Film Fest in Italy.
- In 1985, filming began on a third sequel, The Return of Billy Jack, but the production ran out of money and the film was never completed.
