SEASON 3, EPISODE 1, BILLY JACK AND WINTER COUNTS - The Adventures of Two Hard-Boiled Indigenous American Anti-Heroes!

The Rad Revival House is back with a vengeance in its 3rd Season!

We are thrilled to open Season 3 with quite the lethal combination: a dual look at the unique 1971 vigilante thriller BILLY JACK, and the gritty hard-boiled Native American mystery thriller novel WINTER COUNTS. Our Special Guest Lecturer is David Heska Wanbli Weiden, the author and brilliant mastermind behind WINTER COUNTS!

Weiden and our host Professor Cesare break down what parallels BILLY JACK and WINTER COUNTS together: both film and novel showcase the adventures of true Indigenous American badasses and their shared desires towards brutal yet righteous justice. In BILLY JACK, star and director Tom Laughlin is the eponymous hero, an Indigenous ex-Green Beret and Hapkido expert who uses his deadly martial arts skills to protect a special school of Hippie students from a gang of sadistic white racists deep in the American Southwest. Caught between his desire for violent revenge and deep pacifism beliefs, Billy is pushed to the breaking point when a loved one is caught in the crossfire.

In WINTER COUNTS, a young Indigenous enforcer/reluctant sleuth named Virgil Wounded Horse is hired to find the source of illegal drugs creeping into his South Dakota Indian reservation. Unsure in taking the case at first, Virgil then declares war on the drug dealers when they take their poison drastically close to home.

Both BILLY JACK and WINTER COUNTS offer great glimpses into the world of Indigenous American culture, and what happens when hate and crime rear their ugly heads in said world. Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, provides fantastic insight of what BILLY JACK means to him as an Indigenous American, and how the film (despite its rather outdated cinematic feel and utterly bizarre moments of haphazardly thrown sequences), contributed to the write of his novel. Plus, Weiden shares exciting news about the long-awaited sequel to WINTER COUNTS, coming in 2026!

We at the RRH thank David Heska Wanbli Weiden again for his terrific contribution to our show, and highly recommend everyone to read WINTER COUNTS available on Amazon!