Trip with the Teacher

Stranded during a bus tour of the remote California countryside, a feisty teacher and her small group of sexy teenage students become the terrified targets of two nasty bikers who are intent on rape and murder.

Whilst Trip With the Teacher might not be the all-out sleaze-fest that the above short synopsis suggests, there is still enough gratuitous nudity (from most of the girls), well handled action, and nasty violence to ensure that fans of low-to-no-budget 70s exploitation flicks should not be too disappointed.

Director Earl Barton certainly keeps things moving along at a brisk pace with his no-nonsense direction, and the cast all put in solid performances for this kind of fare, with Zalman King (future producer of soft-core porn) being particularly memorable as the more unhinged of the two bad-guys. His portrayal of deadly nut-job Al brings to mind David Hess's Krug from The Last House on the Left: a cold, heartless killer whose capacity for cruelty knows no bounds. As the film progresses he goes from merely menacing (in his bug-eye wraparound shades), to total psychotic lunatic—complete with facial ticks, incoherent rambling, and uncontrollable outbursts of violence.

Pete (Robert Porter), Al's brother, isn't quite such a reprehensible fellow, but he just can't say no to his degenerate sibling. So when Al starts to rape and kill, good ol' Pete joins in, rather than upset his li'l bro'.

Fortunately for the trapped teenagers and their teacher, a third biker, Jay (who joined the brothers on the road after helping them fix a tyre), turns out to be a nice guy, and risks his life to save them from their plight.

As I write, Trip With The Teacher has an IMDb rating of 1.4, which is a downright tragedy. The film might be nasty, cheap and sometimes plain silly (the reappearance of a character who is presumed dead is particularly daft), but it's always entertaining. Don't watch this film expecting slick visuals and Oscar winning acting; enjoy it for what it is—a raw piece of 'drive-in' style 'trash'.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

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.

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.

This was a mediocre grindhouse flick for me. If it wasn't for the fame of Zalman King I guess you wouldn't have seen it that much. Zalman became famous in the eighties for producing erotic flicks. Most of the actresses played in grindhouse flicks but Cathy Worthington was the one who made it into the scene even appearing in Dallas, Jill Voight was seen in Friday The 13th Part 2. As I said, grindhouse and of that kind with the bad bikers in it. We had so many in it but due Zalman this do stands out because Zalman really carries this flick. It is a bit slow and campy sometimes, just watch the tow scene with the bus. The quality of the movie itself was really bad, even on DVD, a lot of scratches, bad sound and hiss. It really takes you 45 minutes before the girls are getting a bad trip with their teacher after their bus broke down and the bikers come in handy. Of course as a grindhouse there is a bit of nudity but not to mention. Not really my cup but a must have due the well known reasons explained earlier.

You should know what you're going to get from this low-cost midnight drive-in schlock that represents the sleaze and sadism in a decade of scuzzy low-brow exploitation. It gets all the ticks of being raw, gritty and sordid. Yes, it's rough around the edges and director Earl Barton's minimal handling makes sure it works to its strengths, and surprisingly strikes up a bit of tension, and unease. However it couldn't escape that cheesy daftness, which loomed largely by its repetitively funky and racy music score. It was quite an unusual one though, which doesn't always fit in. The shallow story is plain and simple, if a little meandering from time to time and few senseless occurrences are hard to believe. I don't know how many opportunities arose to escape, or do something, but everyone seemed happy to sit and watch. While the obvious script starts off awkwardly and melodramatic, it then gains control and builds tension. Sure it isn't first-rate, but it holds your interest and includes a surprise or two. Performances are workable enough. Zalman King terrifically chews it up as the menacingly neurotic loon biker, that along with his brother (played placidly by Robert Porter) go onto terrorise a small group of teenage school girls (Cathy Worthington, Dina Ousley, Susie Russell and Jill Voight pull off their parts), teacher (a fiery Brenda Fogarty), and a fellow biker (a fine Robert Gribbin) in the forlorn California desert. Due to the relaxed pacing, it gives you time to soak up the situation and the harshly captured bare-desert backdrop that complements the bare-knuckle survival tag. Then it pulls out the punches, and ups the notch. Some of the action scenes are over-the-top, and corny but amusing. The cruel violence is sexually scathing, and nasty. While we see little flesh, the leering camera-work focuses on the scummy side of things, and can get up within the action.

That bad… not that bad. Definitely nothing special though, but the intensely bold theatrical turn of King makes it worth-a-peek.