Apparently Laughlin wrote the Billy Jack script earlier and couldn’t get it made, so The Born Losers was an exploitation approach, as the "Outlaw Biker" film had become quite popular. It turns out, then, to be one of the more interesting of the era’s Outlaw Biker movies, as it’s part that, part Walking Tall/Death Wish, part Kung Fu. Billy Jack is a likable character and doesn’t yet have on his iconic black hat with the beaded Native American band, but just a simple ranch worker’s hat. He looks like a regular guy, a camper, or fisherman, driving around in his jeep. Apparently he used to work breaking horses, and so you might imagine him as Montgomery Clift’s character in The Misfits—and like that character (who is OK when up in the highlands with the horses, but is a mess when around people and alcohol)—Billy Jack gets in trouble, as well, down in the lowlands with folks. Anyway, you get the sense that he’s okay with being by himself, maybe a guy who gets no more pleasure than from waking up outdoors and making a cup of coffee over an open fire. But then he keeps running into this biker gang who are terrorizing the good people of this small California town. It’s kind of like a big high school, an enclosed society none of them can escape from and they’re all crossing paths constantly. The bikers seem to know Billy Jack, too, as they derisively call him “Indian,” which isn’t obvious by his appearance (he’s apparently half Native American, half Green Beret Vietnam veteran). So, like a high school, there’s the popular kids, and the outcasts and loners (Billy Jack) and the bullies… represented by this outlaw biker gang called “Born to Lose.”
When I was a kid we did not fear “terrorists” the way the kids of today are taught to—though contrary to what you might think we were aware of terrorists… they weren’t invented on September 11, 2001. But we did feel distant from them, with the exception possibly being the airline hijackers and the Manson Family. Besides the likely nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Russians (which was more like an inevitable but distant reality, like death itself) the major domestic terror was that of the outlaw bikers who traveled in large numbers, were out there, but also, occasionally, came to our town. My friends and I, on our bikes, down at our pizza place out by the state highway, once had the fortune of seeing a huge gang of more than a hundred bikers on Harleys come through town, stop at the convenience store and gas up. I don’t recall being afraid at all, but more fascinated by the spectacle. The movies I’d constantly see on TV, though, were about being terrorized by the bikers. Usually a suburban family would be traveling in rural California—husband, wife, a few kids in a station wagon. They’d have an initial run-in with the bikers on the road, and then later, confrontations again and again, as if they were the neighbors from Hell. Somehow the husband and wife would get separated, the wife nearly sexually assaulted—though there was always the glimmer of the idea that the wife might be attracted to the bikers. Later, things would improbably ratchet up to a life and death struggle, and the man of the family would be tested, forced to prove his manhood by protecting his family—but also revealing an unwanted hidden killer under his buttoned-down exterior. It seemed like one movie after another followed the formula. This combination of disturbing, mixed messages always left a confused and unpleasant taste in my mouth.
The Born Losers was a breath of fresh air in this regard—in that the hero wasn't some suburban dad. The bikers were terrorizing the straight people—who were all assholes, anyway. The gang, Born To Lose, were just downright evil, appropriating and raping women and making them into their “mamas”—who where pretty much sex slaves who also had to cook, clean, and do laundry. The idea that some of the local girls would want this fate is right on the surface, as their home lives are depicted as miserable, and even abusive, pushing the unwise girls from the frying pan into the fire. The bikers, then, of course, immediately reveal themselves to be very bad people, and if one of the girls they have raped tries to testify against them, they are further terrorized into silence. The police are no help at all. This lovely little California town, then, is depicted as a place with no law and order, where terror and fear rule absolutely.
Of course, in comes Billy Jack, a man who would be happy out in the woods away from people (though has to come into town to get screwed by the bank)—but maybe there is a side of him that needs people, too, even if it’s in conflict. On one hand you could say he has the basic human need of finding some fulfillment by helping people; on the other hand, you could say he needs some very bad human beings to practice his “Hapkido” on. After all, you can’t hapkido a horse. Is he looking for love, for sex? It’s not on the surface, but you’ve got to think—like every man alive—he holds the fantasy of saving a hot lady from a bad situation and then having her fall in love with him. Though you also get the sense that he’s not interested. Maybe it’s because Tom Laughlin, according to info available on the internet, has been married to the same woman since 1954 (Delores Taylor—who co-produced, co-wrote, and acted in his, or should we say, their, films). Billy Jack, who is of course an extension of Laughlin, may just be one of the last of the faithful men.
This whole thing might sound like a bit of a drag, but the reason it isn’t is because of real focus of this movie, a character named Vicky who arrives riding a white Triumph while wearing a white bikini. She is played by an actress named Elizabeth James who may have had the good sense to quit while she was ahead—this is pretty much her sole film appearance. You can’t find much out about her—and you can feel what it must have been like for all the young men who became obsessed with her after this movie appeared. One thing my sources do tell me is that she was either the screenwriter, or shared screenwriting credits with Laughlin (both under pseudonyms, for some reason). Is this her movie as much as Tom Laughlin’s? As far as what’s on the screen, it is. She is fascinating, the kind of actress you feel like might be the worst actress of all time, but then again, what she’s doing is not acting so much a performing, and she is certainly entertaining and weird. She kind of reminds me of the Sandra Bernhard character in King of Comedy. In her first run-in with the bikers, she masks her fear by being more aggressive than they are, asking, “Whose got the acid?” It’s not coincidental that she also rides a motorcycle, and she has very similar white framed sunglasses to the leader of the biker gang, Daniel, who seems to be thrown off his game by her. The other women in the movie who are victims of the bikers are shown having unhappy home lives, but Vicky just has a dad who was supposed to show up and didn't. It’s almost like there is something otherworldly about her, like she might be a visitor from the spirit world. There is something in this movie going on just beneath the surface—it has to do with the relationship between Billy Jack, Vicky, and Daniel—who is doomed right from the beginning. Maybe all three are doomed. It’s never explained, maybe never fully formed, (maybe edited out for TV), but it’s there, which is what makes this movie so fascinating.
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