I always dug the Billy Jack pictures. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re low budget independent movies about a half white/half native ex green beret badass with hippie values. He and his wife (the director and producer of the movies, respectively) run “The Freedom School” where they teach kids to be themselves and stand up for minorities and strum guitars and crap. Billy Jack lives one of those lives where, you know, he’s always out trying to ride a horse or a jeep or something, just minding his own business, but inevitably he’s gonna see some racist assholes picking on an indian or some rapist assholes picking on a girl or something along those lines. And he’s gonna walk over quietly and interject himself into the situation. This sometimes means beating some ass, but also sometimes means getting his own ass beaten and ending up in jail. But the important thing is he stands up for the downtrodden. That’s his primary interest and hobby, I guess. He stands up to rich kids, corrupt cops, even the energy industry in the last one, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, where he becomes Senator Billy Jack and makes his stand in an exciting filibuster climax.

(if you REALLY haven’t heard of Billy Jack you probaly assumed that last part was a joke, so I should make it clear that it is not.)

Well this is the VERY FIRST Billy Jack movie, even before the movie Billy Jack. Apparently they wrote Billy Jack and it sat around for ten years, because they couldn’t get anybody interested in making a movie about “a half-blood indian,” even if the dude playing him is a white dude who’s only down because he’s married to “a half-blood indian.” So they put the character into this biker movie, called up Samuel Z. Arkoff, and the shit was on.

I never seen this one before and early on I was thinking damn, I saved myself a real treat here. The tone feels a lot like the other ones but to make it more obviously commercial they got all these cute girls in bikinis. The main girl they got has her hair cut real short, and she rides around on a motorcycle wearing white sunglasses, bikini and go-go boots, talking tough when she gets surrounded by the biker gang of the title. These assholes have been terrorizing this little beach town. (more…)

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