Trip with the Teacher

1.7 out of 10 is a ridiculously low rating, even for a miserable and long-forgotten 70's exploitation flick, but here in the case of "Trip with the Teacher" I'm tempted to think it is better this way. For you see, such a low grade automatically discourages random viewers to check it out whilst avid and fanatic cult purchasers might find it an extra motivation to track down a copy. And this really is such a film that should only and exclusively be seen by admirers of gritty and low-key exploitation. People – you know who you are – who couldn't get enough of the shocking impact of such films as "Last House on the Left" and "I Spit on your Grave", but simultaneously also people with a high level of tolerance for errors in continuity, amateurish acting performances and copious amounts of gratuitous sleaze. The violence and sheer nastiness in "Trip with the Teacher" is totally uncompromising (raping a teacher in front of her petrified pupils, pushing a girl's face in the mud until she chokes …) but the whole thing is never as truly disturbing as it aims to be because of the inept production values. The devoted teacher Miss Tenny is out on a summery field trip in the desert (oh yeah, loads of stuff to sightsee there) with four of her sexiest and lewd students and one friendly old chap behind the wheel. Their ramshackle bus breaks down in the middle of a godforsaken place and the sexy posse quickly becomes the target of interest of a trio of bikers. One of them is actually a good guy and only just joined the two siblings who have far more malignant intentions regarding the poor and defenseless stranded girls. Especially Al is a deranged and nihilistic psychopath, and when he kills the bus driver, he pulls his scared brother Pete into a scheme to terrorize, humiliate, rape and eventually kill the teacher and her girls. Zalman King, future creator of the soft-core erotic TV-show "Red Shoe Diaries", is undeniably the main attraction of this film. His appearance and villainous performance is shamelessly based on David Hess' legendary pervert character in the aforementioned "Last House on the Left", but King is nevertheless an effectively menacing and unpredictable bastard. He continuously raises the impression of being high on drugs even though we never see him take any and he spends most of his screen time just staring at his young preys with diabolical eyes. Obviously, "Trip with the Teacher" is largely devoid of suspense and substance and quite stuffed with improbabilities and flaws. The tagline states "How far should a teacher go to protect her students?" but, in reality, Miss Tenny actually does very little to protect them! She sits around motionless when the bikers attempt to sexually assault her scarcely dressed pupils and she's even directly responsible for the death of one of them. The most innocent of them all, I may add. The girls also react very unnaturally to some of the shocking events and, if you ask me, they let several chances to escape go by. But now I'm just splitting heirs, of course, as logic and intellect is the absolute last thing you should expect in a trashy Grindhouse feature. Most importantly, "Trip with the Teacher" is a genuine 70's exploitation effort with a grainy atmosphere and provocative sleaze. The film has a prototypic (and thus terrific) exploitation soundtrack, with tunes that get repeated over and over and over again, and loads of depressingly remote outdoor filming locations. If you like to consider yourself a fan of smut, you can't afford to miss out on this.

I bought this movie as part of a 12 movie boxed set from the dump bin at the local department store and gave it a try. At first, I wasn't sure if it was one of the many sleazy 70's exploitation flicks featuring explicit sex, rape, and full-frontal nudity, or more reminiscent of the much tamer teensploitation ventures from the 60's. Right around the time the first nipple made its appearance, I realized the former was true.

As the movie opens, we are introduced to two groups of people. First, we have a (short) bus containing the driver, a very young teacher, Miss Tenny, and four female students, all heading out to Los Angeles through the desert for an educational field trip of some sort that is never fully elaborated upon. Second, we meet two brothers who are either on the run from the law or have been recently released from prison (again, no further elaboration), who have had the misfortune to wind up with motorcycle problems. The brothers, Pete and Al, are visited on the side of the road by nice guy motorcyclist Jay, who decides to stop and help them out, then join them to make a trio. As it turns out, they're heading the same direction as the bus full of hotties, and they all end up fueling up at the same gas station. It is, at this point, that we see the nature of the three bikers--Jay is the nice guy, and Pete would like to be, but Al, his brother, is completely f**ked in the head. We learn this after Al intensely crushes a handful of stamps then kills the gas station attendant by lowering a car on the poor old man.

Shortly after the encounter between the two groups, the bus breaks down and Marvin, the bus driver, has no idea how to fix the problem. While doing this, the four students have a fun little conversation about sex, which leads to a rough and dirty cat-fight between the easy girl and the Bible-banger. The three bikers then encounter the bus again, and seem about halfway willing to assist--although crazy Al starts showing his true colors to the teacher while flirting with Bobbie, the feisty and logical slut of the group. While Miss Tenny would prefer to have the three leave and never come back, Pete and Jay, trying to be civil, offer to help the group out and Al, snickering mischievously, agrees. Having precious little choice, the school folks allow the bikers to tow them (yes, three motorcycles are shown towing a short bus), but Al doesn't take the bus to safety. Oh no. They take the bus to isolation, and the mayhem begins.

This flick does have a few extreme situations, including rape and murder, and a bit of female nudity as well. It also has a distinct but thin story to go along with it--although characters aren't well developed and we never do find out the background of either the protagonists or antagonists. This movie is genuinely a product of its own time--I say this because, for example, it does portray the dominance of a group of five women by two men after the male hero, Jay, is incapacitated. I dare say that if this movie were to take place only ten years later, the five women would have knocked Pete out and beaten Al's skull to a bloody pulp. Hell, there was at least one scene when the lone Al was writhing on the floor in existential anguish while three of the young women stood and watched--if only one of them had the fortitude to boot him square in the head, the movie would have been over at that point. Let's face it: modern audiences would never tolerate that sort of weakness being portrayed by characters for no other reason than their gender.

This flick isn't for everyone, but when it comes to cinematic sleaze, there's always going to be an audience. For those expecting something along the lines of Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, prepare to be disappointed, as TRIP WITH THE TEACHER isn't nearly as extreme. Overall, it's really a minor entry into the exploitation genre. It's worth watching if part of a cheap boxed set, but I honestly could not see hunting this down.

One of Kings' first sexploytation movies( long before the Red Shoes Diary). The teacher sacrifices all for the sake of her students, all for naught. King is his usual loathsome self, a master at "bad" guys. A good movie to waste 90 minutes with, I'd love to have a video of this flick.

This movie starts out reminding me of the even more awful film "Manos: the Hands of Fate" as you see a vehicle driving through the countryside. The vehicle in question is a bus and yes I do believe it is the short bus because everyone in it is incredibly stupid from the teacher, to the students, and even the bus driver. And speaking of stupid, one dude comes across two brothers, one of whom has a bad wheel on his motorcycle. The guy proceeds to offer his assistance, no harm there, but then he keeps on driving with them like they have been friends forever and they all proceed to stalk the girls on the bus. The girls are very cute and have that 70's natural look I love, in fact all the girls look like the cuties from the porn film "Little Girls Blue". Though none of them were actually in that film. The bus eventually breaks down and the one of the brothers really shows his colors to the teacher, the dude who was helping, and the girls and they still let themselves be towed into the middle of nowhere. I am not sure if the helpful guy would have even minded the crazy guy dropping a car on some old dude in the gas station if he had seen it. Pretty soon the crazy guy and his brother hold the others hostage even though there are two of them and six of the others. The idiots had ample times where the crazy guy would just fall to the ground having a fit and they would just watch. At one point the one girl could have smashed the other brother with a bottle, but did not. In the end this film was rather boring, needed more nudity not the violent stuff, but maybe a scene with the girls taking their tops off to skinny dip. Virtually no blood, which is kind of strange considering I got this in a twelve pack of movies called Gorehouse legends. I would say it is nice to look at the pretty 70's girls and the crazy guy's performance as it is well done. Other than that you are not missing much.

Trip with the Teacher is standard exploitation fare that just doesn't fully embrace what it is supposed be, namely, exploitive. The premise has the right formula of sleazy ingredients: Miss Tenny and her group of gorgeous twenty-something women exploring remote desert vistas are joined in their travels by three wayward bikers and are soon stranded somewhere in the desert. After the mentally unstable Al, played by Zalman King in all his face contorting madness, runs down the bus driver in one of his many fits of rage he talks his laid back and seemingly stoned brother Pete into eliminating any witnesses. Unfortunately for them the brothers rode along with good samaritan Jay who attempts to protect the utterly useless women from these two buffoons. Of course Jay manages to screw that up leaving the lovely ladies to fend for themselves by cowering in corners of a dilapidated shack. This is what drove me insane. The women constantly outnumbered their captors and could have easily escaped if they all weren't so helpless. What would be more satisfying than watching a bunch of half-naked tormented women tearing these guys to death? It's an exploitation movie! Exploit! Zalman King with his humongous bug-eyed sunglasses is more annoying than terrifying as his bouts of madness consist of a mess of hair, nose, and giggling. The only redeeming quality of this film is the beautiful women in various states of undress. I was particularly enamored with the bad girl portrayed by the stunning Dina Ousley. With her yellow short-shorts she is definitely the hottest thing in the desert. Trip with the teacher does capture the feel of the early seventies southern California hippie biker culture well. Sadly, after you watch it once you will have no desire to see it again.