THE BORN LOSERS
Directed by Tom Laughlin
Written by Elizabeth James
StarringTom Laughlin, Jane Russell
Released in 1967
Directed by Tom Laughlin
Written by Elizabeth James
StarringTom Laughlin, Jane Russell
Released in 1967
As the first of four movies featuring the Billy Jack persona, those Green Beret shoulders of the central character had to support a heavy weight. Without the Billy Jack franchise, we would have missed the merging of the drive-in and indoor theater audience. Absent the Native American karate master, the counter-culture would have had to look toward less wholesome ideologues for their inspiration. Stripped of Tom Laughlin's most memorable character, people might have flirted with the idea that The Hell's Angels were occasionally good guys. And, as a better man than Laughlin once said, "Boy, you're gonna carry that weight a long time."
Far more important to our purposes, The Born Losers was an independent film, shot without much concern for permits and licenses. Laughlin financed the movie himself up until post-production, when American International Pictures gave him $300,000 to complete the project. Laughlin both starred in and directed the film. He gave his wife and kids roles as extras. He shot "live" and asked permission later. He even saved money by using a crash scene from a drive-in movie from three years earlier and passed it off as his own. And the female lead in the movie wrote the screenplay.
The "independent" tag here is less important in terms of future silliness such as the Blair Witch Project than it is in terms of the control a writer-director team could exert on the finished product. Laughlin had been wanting to make a movie about exploitation of Native Americans. This is not that movie. But it takes movies to make movies and so before Billy Jack (which was such a movie), concessions to art had to be made. So we have a young Vicki in a white bikini riding an effeminate motorcycle through a small California town, encountering a large gang of bikers (The Born Losers themselves) who peddle drugs, corrupt the youth and rape the town's daughters. Terror reigns and young folk are simply out of control: so far, we're safely in the realm of standard biker movie fare. What makes this film different from other exploitation movies of the period is that the towns people are cowards--self-righteous, indignant and outraged, but cowards all the same. Even Billy resists getting involved because he's an expendable outcast and knows it. But when his trailer gets robbed, even he refuses to just lie down and take it.
In 1967 a lot of nonsense floated around about a generation gap. But it was not all lies. Some older people were content to send their kids off to war for no particular reason and when those kids said they did not want to go, some of their elders were quite pleased to have the police bash their kids' heads in or have the National Guard murder them on college campuses. Most of these things had not happened by January 1967, when The Born Losers was released. Maybe Laughlin was prescient. What he was for certain was perceptive enough to recognize that many young people suspected their parents sniveled when they should have been standing tall. Laughlin tapped into that suspicion and the result was American International's most profitable film to date.
Far more important to our purposes, The Born Losers was an independent film, shot without much concern for permits and licenses. Laughlin financed the movie himself up until post-production, when American International Pictures gave him $300,000 to complete the project. Laughlin both starred in and directed the film. He gave his wife and kids roles as extras. He shot "live" and asked permission later. He even saved money by using a crash scene from a drive-in movie from three years earlier and passed it off as his own. And the female lead in the movie wrote the screenplay.
The "independent" tag here is less important in terms of future silliness such as the Blair Witch Project than it is in terms of the control a writer-director team could exert on the finished product. Laughlin had been wanting to make a movie about exploitation of Native Americans. This is not that movie. But it takes movies to make movies and so before Billy Jack (which was such a movie), concessions to art had to be made. So we have a young Vicki in a white bikini riding an effeminate motorcycle through a small California town, encountering a large gang of bikers (The Born Losers themselves) who peddle drugs, corrupt the youth and rape the town's daughters. Terror reigns and young folk are simply out of control: so far, we're safely in the realm of standard biker movie fare. What makes this film different from other exploitation movies of the period is that the towns people are cowards--self-righteous, indignant and outraged, but cowards all the same. Even Billy resists getting involved because he's an expendable outcast and knows it. But when his trailer gets robbed, even he refuses to just lie down and take it.
In 1967 a lot of nonsense floated around about a generation gap. But it was not all lies. Some older people were content to send their kids off to war for no particular reason and when those kids said they did not want to go, some of their elders were quite pleased to have the police bash their kids' heads in or have the National Guard murder them on college campuses. Most of these things had not happened by January 1967, when The Born Losers was released. Maybe Laughlin was prescient. What he was for certain was perceptive enough to recognize that many young people suspected their parents sniveled when they should have been standing tall. Laughlin tapped into that suspicion and the result was American International's most profitable film to date.
