RIP Tom Laughlin

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/15/showbiz/b ... hlin-obit/

Don't think they will update the TCM tribute for Billy Jack

[silverscreenselect]

Billy Jack was released pretty much as drive-in filler when I was in college, but it became incredibly popular and played for months in first run theaters. It was actually a fairly mediocre movie but it had a great theme song (One Tin Soldier) and a hero with the right anti-establishment attitude for the time. And the one scene everyone remembered:



Laughlin and Taylor made two sequels in which there was far more politicizing and far less action. The Trial of Billy Jack featured Georgia Tech football coach (then coach at UCLA) Pepper Rodgers playing a cop and was one of the worst movies of all time. Billy Jack Goes to Washington was a remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I'm not sure how Laughlin ever got the remake rights (John Denver also wanted to do a remake which I feel would have been much much better).

[TheConfessor]

Go ahead and hate your neighbor. Go ahead and cheat a friend.

[SpacemanSpiff]

What most folks forget (or don't know) is that "One Tin Soldier" predated Billy Jack by two years; it was a hit in Canada for The Original Caste.

When Billy Jack was out, and Coven's remake of the song was an American hit, I was always amazed at how many folks had their interpretation of the song affected by the movie.

[SportsFan68]

That's how I saw it -- as a drive-in movie filler. The kids in my generation loved it; Mom and Dad's generation, not so much.

I wish he hadn't made the inferior sequels, but I guess a person's gotta eat.

[TheConfessor]

What most folks forget (or don't know) is that "One Tin Soldier" predated Billy Jack by two years; it was a hit in Canada for The Original Caste.

When Billy Jack was out, and Coven's remake of the song was an American hit, I was always amazed at how many folks had their interpretation of the song affected by the movie.

To me, the Original Caste version was the original and definitive version. It was a big hit in Louisville when I lived there, though it only reached #34 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart. The later version by Coven seemed more like an afterthought, though it reached #26 on the Hot 100. Wikipedia claims that it reached #17, but does not cite any source for that. I have three different Billboard books that all show the Coven version peaked at #26.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Tin_Soldier

[jaybee]

I learned a harsh but valuable lesson because of the Billy Jack movies. As a teenager, I took my girlfriend to see "The Trial of Billy Jack". She wanted to see something else, but I insisted. I can tell you that watching little children get gunned down in a movie is NOT going to get a guy any action after the flick.

For future girlfriends, I learned to enjoy chick flicks.

[silverscreenselect]

Tom Laughlin himself posted this trailer on Youtube. You would think it was an SNL parody, but it's not.