Contrary to one reviewer's information, "Born Losers" was a smash at the box office the FIRST time it was released in '67. And it's easy to see why. It's the most entertaining of the "biker movie" genre, because it has a story and vivid characters. Elizabeth James is Vicky Barrington, a vacationing college student who comes up against a nasty motorcycle gang in a California mountain town. Naturally, the gang, headed by a weathered Jeremy Slate, take off after Vicky (who is on a motorcycle wearing white boots and a matching bikini) and two of them eventually catch and rape her. She's not the only victim. Three incredibly foolish local girls visit the gang's "clubhouse" and meet a similar fate. But they don't have a champion like Tom Laughlin (in his first appearance as Billy Jack) who manages to get Vicky out of danger (at least for a while) and subsequently falls in love with her. "Born Losers" has a great score by "Wild Angels" composer (and future Lieutenant Governor of California) Mike Curb, good acting by a large cast, and a fine cameo appearance by Jane Russell as the trashy mother of one of the victimized girls. Add some beautiful locations and some slick motorcycle stunts, and you have a "Born Winner!" Incidentally, beautiful Ms. James turned up as a police dispatcher in the seventies cult classic, "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry". She also wrote the screenplay for "Born Losers" (under the pen name 'E. James Lloyd').

This movie is interesting on many levels. Although it contains a few shocking scenes (if viewed unedited) it still comes across as kind of campy. When a girl on a motorcycle p***es off a motorcycle gang the fun begins. First of all, the girl on the cute little scooter type motorcyle looks like she just finished a gig on the "Hullabaloo" TV show complete with her matching go-go boots and bikini. She is kinda cute except she has a haircut that looks like they put a bowl on her head and cut around it. (She could have at least wore a "Bob's Big Boy Cascade" to sex it up a bit). She mouths off to the group of scumbags who all look like rejects from the Manson Family.

One shocking scene for 1967 is the part where two gang members french kiss (they are both men)! This is to illustrate the free-sex attitude of the era and supposedly (I am guessing here) to show what a bunch of degenerates these guys are.

Jane Russell is over the top here as a drunken, floozy mother of a teenage trollop who does a strip tease in her trailer park that has to be seen to be believed. The look on her face while stripping is somewhere between orgasmic and root canal. RENT THIS AND HAVE FUN!

Tom Laughlin's 1967 film The Born Losers is not what it appears to be; good-guy defeats out-law biker gang and saves young rape victims. On the contrary, Born Losers is Laughlin's take on the war in Viet-Nam and the effects it had on "normal" middle-America.

The motorcycle gang in the film is a symbol of military forces who take-over a town (representing Viet-Nam) and go on a brutal spree of violence and rape. What causes these seemingly normal men to act in such brutal manners? Are there goods guys and bad guys? No, just people caught up in a "cruel" world of hopelessness, acting out their most primal instincts. Laughlin makes sure not to fit his characters into "good" and "evil", but incorporate a little of both in each person. Laughlin's character fights fire with fire, and it seems to say that there are no-rules in war. Controversial to say the least. The movie bombed at the box-office when first released in 1967. After the amazing success of Billy Jack, it was re-released and showed a pretty-profit.

A strong supporting cast of "B" movie legends-Elizabeth James, Jerome Slate, Robert Tessier, Jack Starrett along with a "faded" Jane Russell, make Born Losers one of the more outstanding independent movies of the 1960s.

Born Losers is a Born Winner.