Trip with the Teacher

Trip with the Teacher (1975)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A teacher takes four of her students on a bus ride through the desert when it breaks down. Three motorcycle riders come across them but the problem is that one of them, Al (Zalman King) is a psychopath and soon they're holding the girls hostage.

TRIP WITH THE TEACHER came from Crown International and I'm going to guess that it was a hit when it was originally released. It was certainly a hit during the VHS boom because the film has grown to become a cult favorite among many people. This here is basically another take off on THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT as a group of young women are terrorized by some maniacs and must try and find a way to survive. This genre had been done to death throughout the 1970s and to me this here isn't a good film.

The problem with this movie is that it's just too tame for its own good. Yes there's some nudity when the girls are forced to take their clothes off but there's really nothing overly violent or shocking here. Perhaps had there not been dozens of these types of films then this one would have come off better but when the genre is so full it's hard to make your mark and that's the problem here. The idea of the schoolgirls being attacked by the biker boys is something that could have worked but there just aren't enough good moments in the film.

It's basically the same thing over and over. They are held hostage. One tries to escape. There's a chase. Another one tries to escape. There's another chase. This pretty much happens throughout the running time and it grows rather tiresome after a while. The cast are certainly entertaining enough and King makes for a nice bad guy. The problem, again, is that there's just nothing here that makes the film stand out in a popular genre.

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.

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.

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.