Billy Jack

One of the most significant American films of the '70s, not because it's good - it's terrible - but because of the way in which producer/writer/director/star Laughlin marketed it. After it flopped when first distributed through Warners, Laughlin sued the company for nonfulfilment of their contract - a step few independent producers have ever taken - and then independently distributed it across America, carefully balancing promotional expenditure in accordance with daily examinations of the film's local box-office returns. This marketing of the film, as though it were a rock record rather than a film, produced a bonanza for Laughlin and subsequently set the pattern for the intensive promotions of selective films to their 'natural' markets. The film itself is a down market youth pic with Laughlin as the half-breed Vietnam veteran who stands up for America's misunderstood youth and operates a sort of one-man Countryside Commission.