Born Losers is a 1967 film and the first of the Billy Jack movies. The film introduced Tom Laughlin as the half-Indian Green Beret Vietnam war veteran Billy Jack. Since 1954 Laughlin had been trying to produce his Billy Jack script about discrimination toward Native Americans. In 1967 he decided to introduce the Billy Jack character in a quickly written script designed to capitalize on the then-popular trend in motorcycle gang movies. The story w...
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Born Losers is a 1967 film and the first of the Billy Jack movies. The film introduced Tom Laughlin as the half-Indian Green Beret Vietnam war veteran Billy Jack. Since 1954 Laughlin had been trying to produce his Billy Jack script about discrimination toward Native Americans. In 1967 he decided to introduce the Billy Jack character in a quickly written script designed to capitalize on the then-popular trend in motorcycle gang movies. The story was based on a real incident from 1964 where members of the Hells Angels were arrested for raping two teenage girls in Monterey, California.
The movie was filmed on location in southern California at Seal Beach, Big Sur, and other coastal areas. According to Laughlin's DVD audio commentary, filming was completed in just 3 weeks on an operating budget of $160,000. To cut costs, a stunt scene of a biker crashing into a pond was taken from American International's 1966 comedy The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. The movie was not released until 1969...
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