Trip with the Teacher

TRIP WITH THE TEACHER is a great killer thriller from the golden days of the drive-thru. Back when story wasn't as important as action, motorcycles, and making out with your best gal in the back seat of your pop's T-Bird!

And this movie has it all. It's even got some great acting, in particular from the wonderful Zalman King, who plays the nuanced lead bad guy absolutely perfectly, and who delivers some of the best lines ever uttered in front of a camera. The music is great too. Recommend.

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.

The horror! Cheesy, campy film that dared to show more than the "normal" drive-in theater experience. Scary for a young woman to watch, especially if she's a high schooler or a teacher taking a group of girls on a school field trip.

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.

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.