5 Huge Hit Movies That No One Ever Talks About Anymore | Cracked.com

5 Huge Hit Movies That No One Ever Talks About Anymore | Cracked.com

'Tis true that Billy Jack was a cultural phenomenon despite being an atrocious, amateurish film. And its philosophy was deplorable. The overall point is that hate and violence are good, as long as you hate the correct people.

Our review noted the following:

"I don't really remember that much about the hippie days, but I think that the general idea of the movement (of which I was a part) wasn't really about learning to replace hate with love, but about learning to hate the proper people. Irrespective of whether that was the real key to the counter-culture, it is certainly the point of Billy Jack. The film is filled with hypocrisy.

• The school teaches that guns are evil, although Billy shoots often at bad guys, and eventually mows down a couple of local law enforcement officers. As Roger Ebert said, the film demonstrates that, "A gun is better than a constitution in the enforcement of justice. Is democracy totally obsolete, then? Is our only hope that the good fascists defeat the bad fascists?"
  
  
• In general, it embodies the entire mentality of "you must agree with my pacifism, or I'll kick the shit out of you."
  
  
• The school tries to defend its existence with angry, moronic skits which demonstrate the importance of love in this world - by encouraging hate for the establishment and by demonstrating that Nixon was a reincarnation of Hitler.
  
  
• Billy fights racism, although he is a racist who preaches that Indians understand the world better, presumably because the Indians have a ritual where the person lets a rattlesnake bite him. Apparently the shock induced by snake venom creates a hallucination which allows one to get in touch with reality better. Go figure.
  

It is not a good movie. Oh, hell, it is a terrible as a movie, not even worth a look for your film studies class, but it is a must-see for your cultural studies class. You can read all you want about the scrambled anti-establishment attitudes of the counter culture in "The Sixties", but there is no place where you can see it portrayed in all its earnest naiveté better than in Billy Jack. The children in the "freedom school" were real students from an experimental school called "Other Ways", and the teachers were played by a left-leaning San Francisco improv group called The Committee. Complete with its ludicrous Snidely Whiplash villains and its hypocritical attitudes toward hatred and violence, this film is the fairy tale that represents "the way we were," or at least the way we saw ourselves then. Billy Jack is the ultimate resource to understand the counter culture because it is not a documentarian's objective point of view, nor is it the establishment's view of the enemy, nor is it a fiction writer's retrospective attempt to encapsulate the era. No, this script is actually the counter-culture's view of itself, and its writing is contemporaneous with the events it portrays. Moreover, it is not simply portraying one man's skewed perspective. This film resonated with nearly everyone on the anti-establishment side of the cultural wars which took place from 1967 to 1974. Although made on a shoestring budget, this was the #1 or #2 film at the box office in 1971, a strong indicator that it exemplified the values of the counter-cultural portion of our generation. Let's face it. To understand 'The Sixties' on a deep and visceral level, you must suffer through this film."