What to Watch During a Pandemic - Born Losers
Born Losers (1967)
Dir. Tom Laughlin (under the pseudonym T.C. Frank). Runtime: 114 min.
Born Losers is the type of film that could on all outward appearances easily be dismissed as a standard late-60s biker film. It has all the high points of the genre: a biker gang runs ragtag on a small town, the local authorities are both ineffective and brutish, and the lone hero is both anti-authoritarian and the moral center of the film.
What makes the film unique is that it is the starting point for a four-film run for the protagonist Billy Jack. To those without any familiarity of Billy Jack, he is a half-native ex-Green Barret trained in the art of hapkido (a Korean relative to Japan’s karate).
Originally penned by Delores Taylor and husband Tom Laughlin - who stars as Billy Jack and directs under the pseudonym T.C. Frank, the production used the emerging biker exploitation genre as a vehicle to introduce the politically charged main character. While it is easy to dismiss many “biker” movies as not much more than a pastiche of blurred motion, loud engine revs, and abundant stereotypes, Born Losers stands out with its own particular take on the us versus the system breed of biker films.
A major component of this is due to Tom Laughlin’s unique background. After what looked like the end to a middling late 1950s acting career, Laughlin took a break from acting to start and grow a well-known Montessori school in Santa Barbara, California. The school worked in many ways in line with the “free school” movement, and for the time was quite radical.
It was during this time that Laughlin began self-penning and directing low budget films beginning with The Proper Time. The Proper Time was followed by Among the Thorns, later changed to The Young Sinner, the film that gave American International Pictures head Samuel Z. Arkoff all the confidence he needed to fund the already on the way production of Born Losers.
Another key factor that made the film stand out was the fact that the film began away from the influence of the Arkoff/Roger Corman system of fast, cheap, and out of control filmmaking that would define much of the genre. In fact, the film was well on its way to production before American International Pictures stepped in with financing and further resources.
Released just a year after another American International Pictures biker favorite The Wild Angels, Born Losers shifts the anti-hero role away from the biker club running wild and free, to a solitary man disillusioned by the atrocities of war and the country that sent him to kill innocent women and children. What stands is a thoughtful and sometimes provocative look into American prejudice, lawlessness, and futile authoritarianism that is part of the American International Pictures genre exploitation cookbook.
While the tone was much different than previous American International Pictures releases, it would go on to influence the company’s output following the film’s success. Arkoff noted, “He put in more social-problem business than we would’ve ourselves, but that was an object lesson all by itself. It made the critics sit up and take notice, not just the built-in audience. We benefited as a consequence.”
Due to its different take on the biker exploitation genre, Born Losers was in some ways immune to the criticism lobbed at other productions. While critics were somewhat kind to the 1966 Peter Fonda vehicle The Wild Angels, they were less kind as the flood of films jumped on the bandwagon. Born Losers, with motorcycle interests aside, was at its core a film about an anti-hero taking action amid the local police officers’ and ineffective district attorney’s stymied efforts to curb lawlessness. In this regard Born Losers is more akin to a great American western than a genre exploitation film.
This added demission alone brought praise from both trade publications like Variety, and newspaper critics – a much more powerful promotional tool in 1967 than now. Indeed, more than any biker film since The Wild Ones, Born Losers was able to propel itself through the praise of critical reception. But its most powerful draw was a growing anti-authoritarian counterculture movement which aligned with the films core message.
Shot in PatheColor by Gregory Sandor, the film immediately gets to the point with the introduction of Billy Jack as an enigmatic, half-Indian Vietnam veteran who shuns society, taking refuge in the peaceful solitude of the California Central Coast mountains. His troubles begin when he descends from this unspoiled setting and drives into the small beach town of Big Rock.
A minor traffic accident in which a motorist hits a motorcyclist results in a savage beating by members of the Born Losers Motorcycle Club. The horrified bystanders are too afraid to help or be involved in any way. Billy Jack jumps into the fray and rescues the man by himself just as the police arrive and arrest Billy for using a rifle to stop the fight.
The police throw Billy Jack in jail and the judge fines him heavily for discharging a rifle in public. He is treated with suspicion and hostility by the police. Meanwhile, the marauding bikers terrorize the town unrestrained by the local authorities. The gang rape four teenage girls and threaten anyone slated to testify against them.
College student Vicky Barrington is introduced as a whip smart, though entitled female target of the Born Losers. Over the course of the film she is twice abducted and abused by the gang. The second time, she and Billy are kidnapped together. After Billy is brutally beaten, Vicky agrees to become the gang's sexually compliant "biker mama" if they release Billy. At the police station, Billy is unable to get help from the police or the local residents and must return to the gang's lair to rescue Vicky by himself armed only with a bolt-action rifle.
Billy Jack shoots the club’s leader between the eyes in cold blood, and forces some of the others to take Vicky, who's been badly beaten, to the hospital. As the police finally arrive, a police deputy shoots Billy Jack in the back, mistaking him for a fleeing gang member. He is later found, nearly dead, lying by the shore of a lake by Vicky proclaiming her love for him.
The 114-minute running time was atypically long for a film of this type in 1967, but despite that fact there is never a point that the viewer thinks that the film is bogged down. Part of this is due in large part to a combination of Tom Laughlin’s confident acting, and to a script that never belabors a point too long.
Throughout the length of the film action is a driving rhythm of the story, centered on an anti-hero archetype that predates films like Sylvester Stalone’s First Blood, or even the more contemporaneous series to Born Losers - Walking Tall.
While Laughlin would find continued success with Billy Jack, his returns would prove to be diminishing – and eventually Laughlin would fade from the popular zeitgeist. But with Born Losers you can see the creative spark of passion and politics woven into a b grade drive in picture.
