Born Losers

Back in the 70s drive-in movies were king, and I was one of the drive-in's biggest fans (In case you hadn't already noticed that). But, the drive-in movie wasn't always some low budget piece of crap, oh, alot of them were, but, like today's low budget movies, some were actually diamonds in the rough and those are the ones that have survived and thrived even today. One of those movies is Born Losers.



Born Losers was the first of four movies starring Tom Laughlin as Billy Jack, that's right, the 'one tin soldier rides away movies'. The story here is a pretty basic revenge story with a dash of racism, just to make the bad guys a little badder, here it is: Billy Jack lives quietly and keeps to himself in a small coast town in California, but when a biker gang begins terrorizing the community and goes as far as to rape the local girls and then scare them and their families into not testifying against them, it seems that the loner Billy Jack may be the only person to be able to stop them. He helps the lone woman who is willing to testify and protects her, using only his fists! Billy Jack may have been the first movie to feature a non-Asian actor using karate-based fighting, it was, at least, the first popular movie to do so.

The conflict doesn't only stem from the bikers, it also comes from the police, who don't want Billy's help and both groups dislike Billy because of his Native-American heritage, so Billy not only has to stand off the bad guys, he doesn't get much help from the good guys either, he's a true loner.

Born Loser set the stage for the sequel Billy Jack, which was much more to do with racism against Native-Americans, and then there were two sequels beyond that one, but Born Losers started it all. For being a bit older and quite dated, I'm still giving Born Losers three and a half out of four cigars,

because, besides being the origin of the classic franchise, it's still a pretty compelling movie and the themes of revenge and racism are still pretty relevant today. So, until next time, when I'll defend myself with my feet, not using some martial arts, just by taking off my shoes (damn those stink!)...remember that the best movies are bad movies.