![]() Gwen Smith's gospel/campfire "Freedom Over Me" works much better, but at 35 seconds is unfortunately too short. Theresa Kelly is the minor-league version of Melanie Safka, while Lynne Baker's "When Will Billy Love Me" has her emulating the worst aspects of Joan Baez by way of Marianne Faithfull, the unholiest of marriages. Two of the other female vocalists don't fare as well as Coven's Jinx Dawson, though. The soundtrack contains a different mix and a different vocal than what composer/conductor Lowe released on Coven's eponymous MGM album - that disc mostly put together by Frank Laughlin, son of the film's star, Tom Laughlin. in February of 1970, and disbanding around the time Coven's remake got into this film soundtrack and onto the charts some 20 months later in October of 1971 (bubbling under the Top 25). The hit single, "One Tin Soldier," is a Dennis Lambert/ Brian Potter tune first recorded by Original Caste, the Canadian band that got some activity with the song in 1969, hitting the Top 35 in the U.S. ![]() It is composed and conducted by jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe, and the veteran borrows heavily from Jerry Goldsmith and Planet of the Apes on "Hello Billy Jack," then mixes Native American music with a touch of psychedelia on "Old and the New" - a quaint title considering the bizarre blend of sounds. Jean, the leading lady who ran the Freedom School, was reluctantly played by Tom’s wife, Delores Taylor.The music to the first big independent film produced decades before The Blair Witch Project and My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a strange and striking combination of styles that somehow is effective. And Julie Webb, who played the runaway-with-hepatitis Barbara, was a high school pal of Schock’s. Kit, the headband girl who got “floured” in the ice cream shop was portrayed by Debbie Schock, who was the Laughlin’s babysitter. ![]() The young blonde girl, Carol, who sang the uplifting “My Brother’s Dead” song, was played by Tom and Delores’ daughter Teresa. If some of the “actors” in the film seem a bit wooden, that’s probably because they weren’t professional performers but rather friends of the Laughlin family. ![]() Allowing so many people to see the film at one time increased the word-of-mouth buzz, and Billy Jack, with its $800,000 budget, earned $40 million in its first year of release. Laughlin tried a different tack he had 1200 prints of his movie made and “opened” it in 1200 different-sized theaters across the U.S. When Billy Jack was re-released in 1973 (after a 1971 attempt was halted by legal wrangling), the tradition at the time was for new films to play in one downtown theater in major cities upon release and then eventually move to smaller theaters in the suburbs. So Laughlin dashed off a script based on a 1964 incident with some Hell’s Angels in Monterey, California, and The Born Losers earned enough money for him to begin work on his pet project. What did interest Hollywood investors, though, were violent outlaw motorcycle gang movies. Tom Laughlin already had the basic outline of the script for Billy Jack the movie, but lacked funding because studios simply weren’t interested in a film about peace and love and the plight of the American Indian. The Billy Jack character was actually introduced in the 1967 film The Born Losers. It was considered to be cutting-edge at the time of its release, and is still a cult favorite if nothing else for the '70s-era hippie cheesiness, not to mention the irony of a pacifist loner constantly kicking butts in order to spread his message of peace. Laughlin will probably be remembered most for the film Billy Jack, which he wrote, directed, and co-starred in along with his beloved wife (they’d been married for 60 years at the time of his death). Actor, director, and occasional presidential candidate Tom Laughlin passed away last week at the age of 82 after a prolonged illness.
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