User reviews

Child abuse, the trampling of Indian rights, prejudice, illegal FBI wire-tapping and subterfuge, television exposes, campus shootings by the National Guard, the Mi Lai massacre, culture clashes, Jungian philosophy, police brutality, government corruption, karate, guns, and a spiritual journey are just some of the subjects explored in this sequel to Billy Jack. Surprisingly, despite the title, this is not a courtroom drama. The film is told in flashback, and the trial is over rather quickly. Instead, it's an angry film that was finished shortly after several of the campus killings (ie, Kent State) and Watergate. Most of the film's events and anti-government sentiment were taken directly from the events of the early 1970's.

The director's commentary on the DVD is very interesting, and my favorite discussion is when Tom and Delores acknowledge they "threw in everything but the kitchen sink." They both wish they had reduced the exposition and some of the plot lines, which would have certainly made it a better film, but they were being true to themselves at the time. Unfortunately, this makes the film too long and too preachy, but I still enjoyed it.

After the first Billy Jack movie where he went to prison for five years for involuntary manslaughter the freedom school that Delores Taylor was building on the Indian reservation has expanded quite nicely. There are a whole lot of young people of all kinds now living there and attending school and absorbing the radical ideas as the locals see it of the school.

And the school has done one thing more. They have a pirate radio station on the reservation and are doing all kinds of exposes that some of the powerful locals aren't crazy about. The maddest of the lot is Riley Hill who is the brother of Bert Freed who was the owner of the local Ponderosa in the first Billy Jack movie. Freed moved away after the death of his son, but Hill is the local banker and that position gives him leverage on a lot of the locals.

Poor Taylor whose passive non-violence is being put to some stressful tests in this film as it was in the last film is caught in the middle. And Tom Laughlin is off on a vision quest not be disturbed. That gives the bad guys a chance to do their worst. Which leads to a horrible Kent State like confrontation at the school on the reservation.

This film could easily have told the story in a third to half of its running time. But I suppose producers Laughlin and Taylor couldn't bear to cut a single frame. It really dilutes the story and blunts the impact of the climax.

Still Billy Jack's fans should like The Trial Of Billy Jack.

I've seen some of the comments for this film, and everyone is complaining about the films "activism". It seems foreign to us now since very few of us are activists anymore. But back in the 70's, my generation was VERY active and vocal. I didn't lean nearly as far left as the politics espoused in this film, but I mistrusted the US Government as much as the next person. Tom Laughlin is a very strong anti-war and pro-Indian activist. This film, while poorly acted (as were all the Billy Jack films), has a strong message and it sure gets in your face with it. The timing of the film coincides with the time when most of America greatly distrusted Uncle Sam, so it's politics are mostly correct. My major complaint is the films length...it should have been trimmed. I think there's too much "amateur hour" from the students. Other than that, it's not bad at all. To truly judge this film, you must have lived through the 70's and then you'd understand it better.

Following the events of the previous movie, Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) stands trial and is sentenced by the corrupt system to prison. The kids from the Freedom School decide to fight the system themselves.

The movie makes a big early mistake. After Billy Jack gets sentenced, the movie needs to follow him into prison. Instead, his prison time is skipped over and the movie follows a bunch of no name kids with his wife. His wife is charismatically challenge, not to say that he's some great actor either. After he's released, the movie follows our hero once again. This is part personal vanity project and part sincere hippie idealism. It could be indie camp if only it's not three freakin' hours long. It's so long and so slow. It's obvious that Laughlin is throwing everything into the cooking pot. This is the result of an unencumbered artist who has more confidence than skills.

After serving his sentence for involuntary manslaughter, "Billy Jack" (Tom Laughlin) is released from prison and returns to the Freedom School on the Navajo Reservation. However, the residents of the nearby town still hold a great deal of animosity toward both him and the students at the school and the illegal harassment continues unabated. It gets so bad that both the students and Billy Jack retaliate in kind and this only aggravates the situation even worse. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a fairly long and dull movie which featured an incoherent plot, bad acting and equally awful music. That said, while I have no doubt there are some who either identify with this particular era in American history or idolize this motion picture, I honestly found it to be quite boring and very difficult to view to the very end. Again, it was long and dull. Because of that I recommend it only to fans of the series and have rated it accordingly. Below average.

This is one of the BAD films I really enjoy. It is not painful or boring to watch but instead falls into the hokey and stupid category that make it great party film. Like Plan 9 from Outer Space, this movie tries so hard to say something and comes off as a completely laughable fiasco. The over-the-top completely serious aspects of the movie raise it to this level. The movie The Apple also rises (?) to this level of dreck as well.

Our hero (?) is Billy Jack, a half-breed American Indian who teaches peace through the repeated use of bone-crunching violence! It reminds me of the funny segment from the movie UHF when they advertise the fake movie "Gandhi 2" and feature Gandhi kicking butt and driving a sports car. It's so ridiculous, it's great! Amazingly enough, this was the third Billy Jack film (after The Born Losers and Billy Jack) and the first to bomb at the box office. In fact, the also deadly serious Billy Jack (1971) made zillions at the box office--not because it was a good film (though it wasn't quite as bad as The Trial of Billy Jack) but because it was a perfect film for the times. The hippy-ish aspects of the movies worked in 1971 but by 1974, it was reduced to a cliché.

A moment not to be missed in this movie--the little boy with a mechanical claw for a hand being gunned down by the evil soldiers as the boy tries to rescue his pet bunny! Meant to be poignant, it's just hysterically funny instead!

FYI--This film had the dubious distinction of being selected for inclusion in the book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time" by Harry Medved. I heartily agree with the choice--but must admit it gets a 2 because it's so darn funny--and it doesn't even intend to be!!

While I enjoyed both THE BORN LOSERS and BILLY JACK as fun to watch cult films "Trial Of Billy Jack" was terrible. It seemed to be apologizing for the violence of the previous 2 films with lots of pseudo-hippy rhetoric which was somewhat dated by 1974. It totally lacked what made the previous 2 movies fun to watch Sad indeed.

Omaha, Nebraska, had the dubious honour of being the city Tom Laughlin chose to have the world premiere for "Trial of Billy Jack". I wish he'd given the honour to any other city but mine. I can't think of a film that was harder to sit through than this one; it seemed to never end. I had seen "Born Losers" and like it immensely. I'd seen the first Billy Jack, and it was okay. These are the only reasons I went to "Trial", and at 17 I guess you don't need any others; I was there on opening night in 1974.

The memory of the unending torment I endured while watching this film still sits in my brain, like a compost heap that never fully decomposes. Words can't express the boredom and agony of seeing this movie; 45 hours of labor with my first child was not as difficult. I should have walked out of the theater, and in fact, while the girl in the wheelchair was giving testimony, I did, leaving my fiance there to suffer by himself. I spent as much time as I could in the restroom, but knew I had to go back and face the rest of the film, if only for his sake. Run, don't walk, away from this piece of torture, if you're ever in the vicinity of a Billy Jack Retrospective, or find it while channel surfing. Your memory center will be glad you did.

This movie is a painful experience to watch. Tom Laughlin was a talented filmmaker but he allowed his ego to wreck this movie. It's two-plus hours of speechifying kills this movie. Blah, blah, blah, get on with it. It is so "serious" it becomes unwatchable. Between the many speeches Billy Jack actually changes color. He's red, then he's blue. Ridiculous. If this movie was half the length, it would have become a camp classic. But it's way too long to become even that. However, I must admit it is often quite a beautiful movie to look at. Stunning at times. Overall, "The Trial of Billy Jack" is a career killing mess.

I have spoken to a number of people who didn't like this film, some of whom also did not like BILLY JACK.

The only conclusion I can come to is that those people all have one thing in common: they are the kind of people who can never accept correction, and hate having to hear others speak truths they would rather not face. They don't want to face the prospect of having to stretch their minds or reconsider their preconceived notions.

This movie came at a time in my life when it was just what was needed. I was never afraid of hearing a sermon or accepting a lesson, as I believe we are all students in this life. I am not so perfect, so I'm not afraid to admit I don't know everything. That, in a way, is what happens in this film. The viewer is given an admittedly long, yet tasty, scenic, and fun sermon. Sometimes we need to be preached-to. I just watched this film the other day, and the political points it makes are as prescient today as they were in 1975. This is a movie that taught me, as an Indian myself, how to know myself, my deepest fears and motivations, how to face them with courage, and how to be a man. It was just what I, and many other young people, needed when it came out.

Plus the fact that it is a wonderfully photographed film, that also pays great respect to the Native American community, something no other film had done at that time.

Although it has it's flaws, TRIAL is still, to this day, my favorite film of all time.

Like the spirits teach us, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquest of it."

Ambitious sequel to "Billy Jack" sees Billy going to Prison for four years after his manslaughter conviction. He does his best to adjust and cope. Meanwhile Jean Roberts(played again by Dolores Taylor) has led the freedom school to major success, greatly expanding its mission and resources, even containing a mini-TV station doing political exposes! This brings it to the attention again of town bigots who want it gone, especially after it reports on a nefarious scheme to kick Native American tribes off their land for re-development. Billy is finally released from prison just in time, as he is again forced to do battle with the villains, though with a different outcome... On the one hand, this film is in desperate need of editing, since nearly three hours long is far too much(lots of speeches). Still, the sheer audacity, ambition, and sincerity of this film is to be commended. Unjustly maligned, this is a worthy sequel, with a moving ending.

When I was in graduate school, one of my fellow grad students reviewed this for the college newspaper. He tore it to pieces. You should have heard the anger from the student population. They accused him of being insensitive to the Native American population and wanted his hide. My friend was a serious student and didn't take opinions lightly. It turns out, he was reviewing one of the worst movies ever made. I don't remember much about the first one, but I guess it had some decent parts to it. This is a worthless sequel which attempts to profit on the original's popularity.

This is the third of the Billy Jack films & possibly the worst. Taking place 5 years after the events of Billy Jack, we have our hero coming out of jail & reentering society to find his friends' school now a major hub of culture & education. No sooner than Billy starts to relax at his new environs, trouble arises when the locals want no part of his school & try to make sure that Billy & his masses go away. Clocking in at nearly 3 hours w/some okay fights & whole lot of speechifying, I kept checking my sanity as I had to sit through at least 2 vision quests, a lot of bad singing & imagery too ludicrous to be believed. Needlessly preachy & probably eschewing the filmmakers' beliefs rather than satisfying the audiences craving for ass kicking, this becomes more endurance test than actual film.

It is impossible for me to describe quite the mind numbing level of badness this movie represents save without swearing. I compare to one of the abominable shifting horrors from H.P. Lovecraft's stories. How anyone can claim it was good without being an intensely close minded person who honestly believes Laughlin's (sadly not unique) brand of conspiracy theory frankly seems impossible to me.

The film is so left wing they did all but urinate on an American flag. I would go so far as to say it actively demonizes everyone who could possibly support law and order, or free market, or anyone else who stand for order in society (such as the national guard).

Even without all the political meanderings present in this flick it is horrible. With a bunch of cheesy plot threads and incomprehensible levels of continuity errors that literally make my head hurt.

I am not eloquent enough to properly describe the hideousness of this ultra-left wing piece of tripe, and so I direct you to the in depth review by Ken Bregg of jabootu.com http://www.jabootu.com/tobj1.htm He says what I cannot say here without profanity.

Pretentious sequel picks up with Billy Jack being put on trial for the events of the first film. The original film was a surprisingly fun hybrid of 1960s counter culture and grindhouse exploitation cinema. Kind of "Easy Rider" meets "Walking Tall." A lot of the fun of that film was the unintentional irony that Billy Jack was promoting peace & love while giving a beatdown to every intolerant bigot he encounters, but this sequel forgot to include the satisfying Hapkido beatdowns and instead seemed filled with joyless self-important speeches. While I support most all of the political leanings expressed by the filmmakers, a series of hippie kids making speeches and playing terrible folk music does not make for good entertainment (not to mention having to endure Billy's spirit journey which includes him slapping Jesus at one point). Top it all off with a Kent State inspired finale and it's pretty obvious that the filmmakers (who are really just writer/producer/director/star Tom Laughlin) forgot what made the first film work. Overall, Billy Jack's literal and spiritual trials are boring, pretentious, and minus any good beatdowns. Just take a pass on this one. FUN FACT! "The Trial of Billy Jack" was included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

This film was so bad that the memory of it still pollutes my brain some 25 years later. About the only reason I went to see it was because it had been promoted heavily as a karate movie, and martial arts films were quite big at the time. What I got instead was three hours of 60's left wing political Bee-Ess served up with a massive dose of self-righteousness. Naturally, the hippie school was the embodiment of everything good and wonderful while The Establishment (meaning; everyone and everything else) was shown as being corrupt, venal, sadistic, and without any positive qualities at all. There was absolutely NO attempt at subtlety or evenhandedness here, instead, this movie grabs you by the throat and shoves your face into its one-dimensional worldview. In short, what ruins this film is its relentless preachiness, that, plus the fact that it so quickly became dated. Anyone wanting to know how Reagan went on to win two landslide elections need only watch this film to understand why, since it was this mindset he was running against.

1/10

This movie was long,and it was very powerful for its time in both relation to the Native American movement as well as the anti war movement that was common when the film took place and when it first hit the big screen. If you like either of the 2 topics above then you will probably like the movie. All I can say is I am proud to have it and I was proud to watch it.

I saw this many years ago when it first came out. I had previously enjoyed BILLY JACK for what it was, an interesting little action picture with a leftist political conscience. So I thought I knew what to expect with this one.

But nothing prepared me for the sheer, mind-boggling bombast of auteur Tom Laughlin's magnum opus. The simplistic political ideas he espouses in this example of wretched excess make Michael Moore and Leni Reifenstahl look like amateurs.

You know the old joke about how you have to get the mule's attention by first clobbering him over the head with a two-by-four? Well, Laughlin feels the necessity to pound that poor mule right into the ground with a pile driver until it's in a hole so deep you can see China on the other side. Subtlety, ambiguity, ambivalence, even the possibility of their being two sides to any issue are concepts that have no place in his universe.

If you're the type who believes that the world is a place of Black and White, Good and Evil, with zero shading between, then you may be able to stomach this film. But let all others beware.

A lot of people just don't get the point of the BILLY JACK movies. They are not condoning violence, they are showing us other ways of getting our points of view across. Tom Laughlin was and is an expert in Jungian psychology and he weaves the elements of the Shadow and Persona in all of his films. This movie especially is a mini-dissertation in Jungian concepts. The title is ambiguous in that there is a court trial for Billy Jack because of the violence he is guilty of in the movie BILLY JACK (this is the sequal to that movie). But, the real trials are between Billy and his inner self. The constant struggles that Billy Jack undergoes mirrors everyone's own personal battles. In these days and times, we need a role model like Billy Jack.

Can anyone watch "The Trial of Billy Jack" and not relate it to TSA, Gitmo, Abu Grade? Yes, much of the acting is flat and amateurish. However, given our present sorry state, can't we give points to this movie for its prophetic warnings? Hate "The Trial of Billy Jsck" if you must, but don't ignore its powerful message. Ignore or disparage "The Trial of Billy Jack at your own peril, as "Freedom School, 1975" is "Anytown, 2010". The National Guard who put down their arms remind me of the Oathkeepers.

Let's not discount the fine photography, action and frequently moving scenes. Tom Laughlin also gives another fun performance. I give "The Trial of Billy Jsck" a "7".