Tom Laughlin, a filmmaker who drew a huge following for his movies about the ill-tempered, karate-chopping pacifist Billy Jack, died Thursday at a Thousand Oaks hospital. He was 82.

He had been in failing health for several years, his daughter Teresa Laughlin said.

Laughlin starred in and co-produced the four films of the 1960s and ’70s showcasing Billy Jack, a troubled Vietnam veteran who quietly promotes a message of peace when he’s not throwing bad guys through plate-glass windows.

An iconoclast who battled Hollywood studios, Laughlin fought on other fronts as well.

Laughlin founded a Montessori school in Santa Monica after he deemed the public schools unworthy of educating his children. When he decided the political system was hopelessly corrupt, he mounted three quixotic presidential campaigns. After becoming disillusioned with Catholicism, he immersed himself in Jungian psychology, writing books and counseling friends.

“He was an extraordinary Catholic for about five minutes,” Teresa Laughlin told The Times, “but once he found Jungian psychology, it supplanted everything else.”

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