This time-capsule film from 1971 is a perfect example of having one's cake and eating it, too. Written and directed by filmmaker Tom Laughlin--and starring him in the title role--Billy Jack concerns a half-white, half-Indian karate expert who protects a free school built on principles of pacifism by kicking hell out of pesky rednecks. The story actually embraces that tension between Billy ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Tom Laughlin, Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Julie Webb, David Roya
Directed By: T. C. Frank

Catch the explosive, action-packed hit that thrilled moviegoers and dazzled critics everywhere! Brandon Lee (RAPID FIRE) plays Eric Draven, a young rock guitarist who, along with his fiancee, is brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals. Exactly one year after his death, Eric returns -- watched over by a hypnotic crow -- to seek revenge, battling the evil crime lord and his band of urban ...

Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Starring: Brandon Lee, Michael Wincott, Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson, Bai Ling
Directed By: Alex Proyas

The greatest women-in-prison film ever made, Caged Heat takes the traditional sex-and-violence formula of gorgeous babes behind bars, gratuitous nudity, and degradation at the hands of beastly guards and a corrupt system, and transforms it into rebel burst of grrrl power. Jonathan Demme's directorial debut, made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the glory days of 1970s drive-in ...

Manufacturer: New Concorde
Starring: Juanita Brown, Erica Gavin, Roberta Collins, Donald Heitzer, Mike Shack
Directed By: Jonathan Demme

Director Jack Hill, a protégé of the original schlockmeister, Roger Corman, knew his way around a low budget and a shocking subject. Women-in-prison films were nothing new in 1971, but The Big Doll House had it all--sex, violence, nudity, a sadistic guard, and a sexually frustrated warden--and served it up with an abundance of cheapjack energy and tongue-in-cheek humor. The beauty of ...

Manufacturer: New Concorde
Starring: Judith M. Brown, Roberta Collins, Pam Grier, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell
Directed By: Jack Hill

Cheech & Chong's first cannabis comedy is also their best, a souvenir from the more carefree days before "Just Say No," when people did not feel so defensive about inhaling. In 1978, the prevailing spirit was more like "Just Say Blow." Even New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael liked it (the movie, that is), adding that it was "an exploitation slapstick comedy, rather than a family picture, ...

Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Edie Adams, Marian Beeler, Pam Bille, Michael Caldwell (III), Tommy Chong
Directed By: Tommy Chong, Lou Adler

Angie Dickinson stars as a bank-robbing matriarch in this 1974 Roger Corman production, often described as a knock-off of Bonnie and Clyde. (As if that makes any difference regarding the worth of the film--which is pretty good.) Set in Great Depression-era Texas, the story finds Dickinson's desirable and poor character driven to crime, along with her two daughters (Susan Sennett, Robbie ...

Manufacturer: New Concorde
Starring: Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Susan Sennett, Robbie Lee
Directed By: Steve Carver

Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Jon Finch, Jenny Runacre, Hugh Griffith, Patrick Magee, Sterling Hayden
Directed By: Robert Fuest

Pam Grier and Sid Haig stole the show in Jack Hill's Filipino-women-in-prison hit The Big Doll House, and they pretty much power this superior action-packed semi-sequel as a South American Bonnie-and-Clyde team. The revolutionaries with mercenary hearts decide to liberate the inmates of a jungle women's prison at the urging of their lonely army of single men. All the conventions are ...

Manufacturer: New Concorde
Starring: Pam Grier, Anitra Ford, Candice Roman, Teda Bracci, Carol Speed
Directed By: Jack Hill

Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's ...

Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Starring: Victor Arnold (II), Dominic Barto, Sherri Brewer, Drew Bundini Brown, Charles Cioffi

Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) directed this 1971 detective story about John Shaft (Richard Roundtree), an African American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Victor Arnold (II), Dominic Barto, Sherri Brewer, Drew Bundini Brown, Charles Cioffi