Voyage of the Damned (1976)

          Based on a horrific real-life incident and featuring an enormous cast of international stars, Voyage of the Damned should be powerful, but because the filmmakers opted for a talky approach—and because so many actors were relegated to minor roles that no single character provides narrative focus—Voyage of the Damned is merely pedestrian. The opportunity to make something great was so broadly missed, in fact, that it’s possible some enterprising soul in the future will revisit the subject matter and generate a remake with the impact this original version should have had.

          Set in 1939, the picture depicts one of the Third Reich’s most brazen propaganda schemes. The Nazis loaded hundreds of Jews, some of whom were extracted from concentration camps, onto a luxury liner headed from Europe to Cuba. The passengers were told they were being set free, but the Nazis’ plan was to publicize the inevitable refusal by the Cuban government to accept so many unwanted immigrants. Per the insidious designs of Third Reich official Joseph Goebbels, the plan was to “prove” that Jews are unwanted everywhere, thus justifying the Final Solution. And therein lies the fundamental narrative problem of this picture—every person on board the ship, save for the captain and a few Nazi functionaries—is essentially a pawn in a larger game that’s taking place in Berlin. Thus, none of the characters in the movie truly drives the action, although some brave souls among the passengers prepare political counter-attacks once the true nature of the journey becomes evident.

          Intelligently but unremarkably written by David Butler and Steve Shagan, from a book by Max Morgan-Witts and Gordon Thomas, Voyage of the Damned was directed by versatile journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, who generally thrived with pulpier material; his long dialogue scenes end up feeling stilted and theatrical, especially because some actors ham it up to make the most of their abbreviated screen time. Surprisingly, performers Lee Grant, Katharine Ross, and Oskar Werner each received Golden Globe nominations (Grant got an Oscar nod, too), even though their roles in Voyage of the Damned are so ordinary—and the overall story so turgid—that nothing really lingers in the memory except the haunting real-life circumstance underlying the story. (The picture’s shortcomings are exacerbated by an anticlimactic ending, which apparently represents a somewhat rose-colored vision of what happened in real life.)

          Nonetheless, the luminaries on display in Voyage of the Damned are impressive: The cast includes Faye Dunaway, Denholm Elliot, José Ferrer, Ben Gazzara, Helmut Griem, Julie Harris, Wendy Hiller, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Warden, Orson Welles, and the great Max von Sydow, who plays the ship’s noble captain. (Watch for Billy Jack star Tom Laughlin in a minor role as an engineer.) Fitting the posh cast, Voyage of the Damned is somewhat like an elevated riff on the disaster-movie genre, but the lack of truly dramatic events means the film is less an all-star spectacular and more an all-star mood piece. Grim, to be sure, but not revelatory.

Voyage of the Damned: FUNKY

Billy Jack (1971) & The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) & Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977)

          Actor-turned-auteur Tom Laughlin first portrayed Billy Jack, a karate-chopping recluse who fights for righteous causes, in the 1967 biker movie The Born Losers. Laughlin occupied several behind-the-scenes roles on the picture but used pseudonyms for directing, producing, and writing—one gets the impression he wanted to downplay the idea of his movie as an ego trip. Furthermore, The Born Losers hinted at Laughlin’s agenda of creating a platform for sharing progressive political ideas. Combined with the inherently weird nature of the Billy Jack character, a spiritually enlightened pacifist who solves problems by killing people, The Born Losers revealed that Laughlin was one complicated cat. However, The Born Losers was just the overture.

          After other, non-Billy Jack projects fell through, Laughlin returned to his signature role for the 1971 release Billy Jack. In the series’ defining installment, Billy Jack is the guardian of a hippy-dippy school in rural California, so when local thugs prey upon the school—going so far as to and murder a Native American student and rape saintly teacher Jean (played by Delores Taylor, the real-life Mrs. Laughlin and his constant cinematic collaborator)—Billy Jack springs into action. He carves his way through a goon squad of redneck locals determined to undermine Jean’s flower-power educational aspirations, using the martial art hapkido and the lethal skills he learned while serving as a Green Beret in Vietnam.

          Laughlin stacks the narrative deck, presenting the bad guys as one-note ogres and the good guys as paragons of virtue, with Billy Jack occupying a weird middle ground between the opposite poles. The movie is a disaster politically, arguing that violence is the path to peace, and it’s strange from a storytelling perspective, with meandering sequences that depict touchy-feely rap sessions and other with-it school practices. Yet the cumulative effect of the movie is quite something, one man’s plea for greater compassion in modern society.

          Laughlin also cuts an impressive figure, dressed in head-to-toe denim and sporting one of the coolest hats in ’70s cinema, a flat-brimmed black cowboy job with a multicolored band. Billy Jack became one of the most successful independent movies of the era—although originally delivered to theaters by Warner Bros., the movie was re-released by Laughlin once he regained distribution rights, and the second time around, Billy Jack did bang-up business. Further sequels therefore became inevitable, though Laughlin quickly lost sight of what made Billy Jack popular.

          For instance, the next installment, The Trial of Billy Jack, is a three-hour death march into the surreal wilderness of Laughlin’s imagination. Weakly framed around vignettes of a hospitalized Jean (Taylor) recovering from a mysterious incident at the school, the picture weaves together three primary storylines—Billy Jack’s legal struggles stemming from the events in the last movie; the ongoing culture clash between the locals and Jean’s school, which escalates to even greater levels of violence; and, finally, Billy Jack’s Native American-styled vision quest in the desert.

          Although the movie includes a few exciting fight scenes, Laughlin also makes room for embarrassingly sensitive musical numbers featuring students at Jean’s school, to say nothing of interminably earnest and repetitive speeches. The Trial of Billy Jack is Billy Jack on steroids, but not necessarily in a good way—it’s among the most excessive and indulgent movies of the ’70s, a period not known for cinematic restraint. By the time the threequel climaxes in a ridiculous bloodbath meant to evoke the historical atrocities of My Lai and Sand Creek, it’s clear The Trial of Billy Jack has left the normal realm of human consciousness. Depending on what you bring to the movie, you’ll either find this singular experience a heavy trip or a major bummer.

          Unfortunately, no such ambiguity is needed when appraising the final opus in the series, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, which is wretched. As the title implies, the movie is a direct remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). And, yeah, that means we get to see Billy Jack in a suit, filibustering Congress, which is exactly as awkward and uninteresting as it sounds. Beyond being insipid, Billy Jack Goes to Washington is the only movie in the series badly marred by technical shortcomings—whereas the other pictures have a certain kind of swaggering style, Billy Jack Goes to Washington suffers from dodgy sound work, with many scenes featuring distractingly overdubbed dialogue. Unless you’re determined to see every frame of this series, the final film is to be avoided at all costs.

          Given the diminishing returns of the series, it’s unsurprising Laughlin never completed his proposed fifth entry, The Return of Billy Jack, production on which began and ended quickly in 1985. But, to his credit, he’s still regularly issuing messages on his website, circa 2012, claiming that a brand-new Billy Jack picture is in the works. You’ve been warned.

Billy Jack: GROOVY

The Trial of Billy Jack: FREAKY

Billy Jack Goes to Washington: SQUARE

The Master Gunfighter (1975)

          Thanks to his work as the creator and star of the four-film Billy Jack franchise, Tom Laughlin remains one of the most weirdly fascinating figures of ’70s cinema. On the plus side, he’s a maverick with deeply sincere political convictions. On the negative side, his hallmarks are confused ideology and sloppy storytelling. As a case in point, consider the only movie Laughlin made in the ’70s outside of the Billy Jack franchise, notwithstanding a couple of small acting roles in other directors’ pictures. Like the Billy Jack flicks, The Master Gunfighter is a strange mishmash of bleeding-heart politics, extravagant action, and murky philosophy derived from indigenous cultures. Yet while the Billy Jack movies sprang forth from Laughlin’s turbulent id, The Master Gunfighter is a pastiche of influences.

          The plot was taken from a 1969 Japanese movie called Goyokin, and Laughlin added a smattering of episodes from the history of 19th-century California. Reflecting the story’s Asian origin, all of the principal male characters wear a six-gun on one hip and a Japanese blade on the other. And reflecting the Latin influence on old California, the characters prance around in flamboyant Spanish-style costumes of embroidered bolero jackets, form-fitting bell-bottomed slacks, and puffy white shirts.

          The storyline is as jumbled as the aesthetic. Finley (Laughlin) is a solider at a coastal hacienda whose de facto leader is a fellow warrior, Paulo (Ron O’Neal). In a confusing prologue that writer-producer-director Laughlin spends the rest of the movie explaining and rehashing, Paulo robs gold from a U.S. government sailing ship, and then slaughters a village of local Indians who accidentally come into possession of the loot. After extracting a promise that Paulo never commit another atrocity, Finley leaves the hacienda in shame. Yet while Finley wanders the Mexican wilderness (working, of course, as a sideshow performer), Paulo contrives plans to repeat his infraction, forcing Finely to return home for a showdown—and for a reunion with his wife, Eula (Barbara Carrera).

          As in all of Laughlin’s pictures, unnecessary subplots make the picture feel meandering and vague. Furthermore, Laughlin’s reiteration of tropes from his best-known characterization make Finley seem like Billy Jack in a beard: Laughlin sighs and speechifies before dispatching bad guys, repeatedly expressing the dubious notion that he’d prefer not to kick ass. The funny thing is that Laughlin’s actually a pretty good actor, though he’s his own worst enemy when working behind the camera; melodramatic staging and stiff dialogue undercut the quiet intensity that Laughlin generates simply by occupying the camera frame.

          Just as Laughlin the director subverts Laughlin the actor, Laughlin the producer subverts the whole movie with poor casting. Untalented amateurs are featured in minor roles, Carrera is pretty but vapid, and O’Neal (best known for the Superfly pictures) is truly awful. Only suave African-American player Lincoln Kilpatrick, as a warrior with shifting allegiances, delivers a consistently credible performance. Worse, while some of the movie’s action scenes are exciting, Laughlin’s camera often seems to be in the wrong place, and many scenes end too abruptly. However, Laughlin and veteran cinematographer Jack Marta make great use of the beautiful Monterey, California, coastline and nearby inland forests, so the movie often looks great even if what’s happening onscreen is bewildering.

The Master Gunfighter: FUNKY