The Born Losers

This post isn't about a horror movie but it is about a B-movie. A B-movie featuring Tom Laughlin, the actor who placed Billy Jack on the map.

For those of you not in the know, there is a whole series of films that focuses on a "half-breed-Native-American-Green-Beret Vietnam-War-Veteran” who goes by the name of Billy Jack. (In following movies we learn he is also a hapkido master and gunslinger however it really doesn’t come into play in this one.)

Hello. My name is Petra and I am was a Billy Jack groupie.

This post isn't about the Billy Jack movies that hooked me, though. This post is about the movie that introduced me to Billy Jack, and that movie is The Born Losers, released in 1967.

During the exploitation movie era, there was a genre and SUBgenre for just about every subject imaginable. In the case of The Born Losers, that subgenre was motorcycle gangs and true to form, the gang in this movie is portrayed as unruly, defiant rebels protesting society and everything that is moral. Granted they are not given much of a chance to prove otherwise; but they also do nothing to change the stereotype. Actually, they encourage it.

Not a lot of time is wasted getting to the meat and potatoes of this gang. You see them rebel rousing in the streets and targeting some poor schmoo as the object for contact with their fists. This schmoo they target is pretty stupid in that he didn't back down when these derelict biker boys came pushing him around. Before you know it, Schmoo Boy is getting his ass handed to him orally. Several passerby’s watch yet do nothing as he begs for help and is almost killed.

Luckily Mr. Schmoo stumbles into a deli/cafe where Billy Jack just happens to be having an afternoon coffee or tea, or something. When the owner of the establishment kicks Mr. Schmoo back out to the streets so as to "avoid trouble," Billy Jack feels the need to interfere. He grabs his rifle out of his truck and proceeds to promise bad things to the bikers should they decide to keep harassing Schmoo Boy.

And wouldn't you know that Billy Jack gets busted by the cops while the bikers get off with a warning? Seems almost killing someone is ok, as long as you don't do it while waiving a gun around.

So while Billy Jack is being detained, the bikers are back to running the streets when they notice a sweet young chippy named Vicki Barrington (Elizabeth James, aka co-script writer for The Born Losers,) clad in go-go boots and big 60's sunglasses cruising along on her very own bike. Oh, and did I mention she was wearing a bikini?

Well it seems Vicki is every bit as naive as Mr. Schmoo, and doesn't back down when the bikers being to harass her. After she realizes she bit off more than she can chew, she develops a brain cell and beings to play by the bikers rules in order to self preserve. Unfortunately the result is a drug induced, multiple gang rape that leaves some girls dead, and others wishing they were dead, with Vicki being one of the latter.

The Born Losers plays out a lot like the old westerns, where a lone cowboy takes on a lawless town armed with nothing more than a gun and half a brain. Complete with rifle, cowboy hat and Indian blood running through his veins, Billy Jack appears just that, and manages to position himself as the one man army determined to take out the violent biker gang that always manages to stay an arms length away from a jail cell.

Common themes run through this movie and the following 3 Billy Jack installments: rape of innocent females, Billy Jack's "problem" with authority figures, and a gang of derelicts that Billy Jack takes on virtually unarmed and alone. Unfortunately in The Born Losers, we do not get to sample the karate moves Billy Jack is known for, but we do get to sample his determination and desire to kick thug ass. Sadly, we also get to see his ass beaten more than once, but he proves time and again that the underdog does not always lose, and that his spirit can never be broken.

Billy Jack was the second and biggest money maker in the series. Though filming of it started in 1969, the movie was not completed until 1971, as production was halted when American International Pictures pulling out of the movie. After some bouncing around between Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers, distribution was still lacking, so Tom Laughlin took the movie to the theaters himself in 1971.

Billy Jack died a quick death initially, but a re-release in 1973 brought in surprisingly more than $40 million. Soon Bill Jack had a cult following, due largely in part to the films focus on the plight of Native Americans during the civil rights movement. Additionally, the movie's theme song One Tin Soldier by Coven, remains among the top 100 when the list is adjusted for inflation, and I can certainly see why. It's one of the things I remember most about the movie.

So what about you guys? Any fellow fans out there? Or is Billy Jack the epitome of cheese?

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C.H.U.D

B-movies. Who doesn’t love them? With their D-list actors delivering solid B characters, and a cheese factor that would make any wine lover drool…. Who cares if the story line is unrealistic and downright ridiculous? I for one don’t; I enjoy the hell out of it!

C.H.U.D., a wonderful lil' gem considered a cult classic from 1984, starts out just almost like every other horror movie of the 70’s and 80’s, offering up a victim within the first five minutes. Here we see a woman walking her puppy through the desolate alleys of Manhattan, New York get pulled into a manhole by some unseen foe and whisked away to the city's underbelly below. And just as quickly as the attack happens, it’s over and the streets are once again seemingly deserted.

The key players we meet are:

• George Cooper (played by the not so unknown John Heard) a fashion photographer who ironically won an award for a photojournalism piece he wrote on the “Mole People” of New York, homeless people that reside in the city’s underground recesses. It seems the chick in the opening abduction was his wife, and now he is investigating her disappearance, as well as others.

• “The Reverend” aka A. J. Sheppard (Daniel Stern) a somewhat hippy-fied fellow who mans a soup kitchen out of his quickly deteriorating row house, where he feeds the Mole People on a regular basis.

• Murphy (J. C. Quinn) a freelance reporter that is starting to suspect “something strange is happening under our city streets.”

Individually these characters are kind of lame. Put them together however and they sort of feed off of each other (for lack of better verbiage) resulting in a pretty entertaining flick. Plus they become “smarter” (and I use that term loosely.)

Now see if you can follow along 'cuz it gets a little "complex" even for a B movie:
Cooper gets called down to the station by a Mole person, to bail her out for trying to steal a gun. It seems she wanted this gun for her brother Victor, who apparently needs the gun for protection against some "Ugly Fuckers." Wanting to talk to Victor about this, Cooper accompanies the sister to her underground paradise, only to find Victor definitely did need protection from the "Ugly Fuckers" when he was shown that a massive chunk of Victor's leg had been gnawed off by those same "ugly fuckers!" Being the professional photographer he was, Cooper wasted no time in taking a series of rather graphic impressive stills as evidence!

So for various reasons I won't divulge, Sheppard steals borrows these photos from Cooper's place and uses them, along with some other damning evidence he found underground, as leverage at a meeting he has arranged with the chief of the NYPD, the commissioner of NYPD, and another fellow by the name of Mr. Wilson from the NRC (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.) It is at this meeting that he learns of a scandal where the NRC had tried to dispose of toxic waste by transporting it though Manhattan's sewer and subway tunnels. Unfortunately they were shut down by the city halfway through the process, which resulted in the underground being a giant dumping spot for this radioactive filth!

Well needless to say, the chief, the commissioner, and Wilson vehemently deny that this tonnage of filth has anything at all to do with the disappearances of so many homeless, and balk at the concept of the "ugly fuckers." In a snowball chain of events however, we learn of “C.H.U.D.” - a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller, and the cops have just found one!! (Translation: C.H.U.D.'s are bums who have been severely mutated by the toxic filth and the cops just found a dead one! Ugh.)

Now you might be wondering what a C.H.U.D. looks like, and I'd have to tell you - pretty "fucking ugly!" Up close they look like Freddy Kruger would if he were oozing in between all those exposed tendons and veins. Plus they have these really creepy glowing eyes, and they bleed green gelatinous blood. Yuck! But from a distance, they look like some guy in a pretty lame Halloween costume. It's really rather sad how up close the graphics are pretty damned good but from far away, they are so laughable.

So anyway, with the underground running out of food for the C.H.U.D.'s, they begin to hunt above ground. This is a great scene because here we have a very young John Goodman and equally young Jay Thomas playing roles as goofy cops in a diner that end up being the meal instead of getting a meal.

The movie climaxes with a team from the NRC and a couple flame throwing cops, setting out to put a stop to the C.H.U.D.'s once and for all, but they prove to be rather ineffective. What will they do? Can the city be saved from the increasingly multiplying and carnivorous C.H.U.D's? Well... you are just gonna have to watch it to find out.

In true tradition of a classic B-movie, this one is really... well.... stupid. but admitted a classic in the B genre, therefore expected. The relatively no name actors perform remarkably well however, and even though you might find yourself occasionally shaking your head in utter disbelief (versus sheer disbelief) these moments are core criteria for B-films, and you would not be left with the same impression without them.

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