Watch Trip with the Teacher with a big, whiskey-soaked grain of salt: it's a grindhouse flick, not really a drive-in flick as advertised with its most recent DVD release. Earl Barton knew what he was doing, he was shooting a story that is filled with lots of real good vs evil characters (with maybe one that at one point is kind of gray-area), where good is good and pure and innocent and evil is just flat out f***ing deranged. Even the print on the recent DVD release compliments the picture: it's scratchy, faded, there's a few frames here and there that are just missing or cut out of a scene of dialog or action. It's not meant to be some great movie, but for what it's worth it's a lot of fun and it also takes its sadistic characters as seriously as possible.
Here's the premise: a bus of schoolgirls lead by Miss Tenny to seek out some mountains or something (who cares really, it's just some place in the middle of the desert) are harassed, gingerly at first and then not-so-much, by a couple of greasy bikers (Zalman King as one of them, distinctive with his alien-sized sunglasses) who catch them at a weak spot- their bus breaks down and need a lift. They're taken to a cabin even more in the middle of nowhere, and various rape and murder is then set as the bikers' task. As with other movies of this ilk, not just exploitation in general but more specifically with bikers, there's one good biker in the trio who tries to save the women from certain destruction. But it won't be that easy... in fact, for a large chunk of the running time, Trip with the Teacher is almost as sadistic in nature as Last House on the Left.
Except, in the case of the film-making, it's a lot more skillful and entertaining, with dialog that sounds so trashy you'd hope it was ripped out of text books of high-schoolers (there's one line from a girl about being raised by the bible that's a riot). And there's also Zalman King, who plays one of the sickest, most deliciously wicked and insane villains of the 70s. Strange that a man who is touted for his work on soft-core porn could actually pull out a convincing performance: it's at first seemingly hammed-up, but it's really vicious in that way that's memorable. The rest of the acting ranges from decent to forgettable (two of the girls barely utter a word of dialog for the bulk of the time spent at the cabin), but why carp? Anyone watching Trip with the Teacher is watching it for one thing above all else: skillfully directed trash.
It's better than it has any right to be, but that goes without saying that it knows what it is: this is like one of the rare good pieces of movie-lore that inspired Tarantino and Rodriguez with their pictures: it's unrepentant in its conventions and split of black-and-white, and it's played out to its full extent.
Here's the premise: a bus of schoolgirls lead by Miss Tenny to seek out some mountains or something (who cares really, it's just some place in the middle of the desert) are harassed, gingerly at first and then not-so-much, by a couple of greasy bikers (Zalman King as one of them, distinctive with his alien-sized sunglasses) who catch them at a weak spot- their bus breaks down and need a lift. They're taken to a cabin even more in the middle of nowhere, and various rape and murder is then set as the bikers' task. As with other movies of this ilk, not just exploitation in general but more specifically with bikers, there's one good biker in the trio who tries to save the women from certain destruction. But it won't be that easy... in fact, for a large chunk of the running time, Trip with the Teacher is almost as sadistic in nature as Last House on the Left.
Except, in the case of the film-making, it's a lot more skillful and entertaining, with dialog that sounds so trashy you'd hope it was ripped out of text books of high-schoolers (there's one line from a girl about being raised by the bible that's a riot). And there's also Zalman King, who plays one of the sickest, most deliciously wicked and insane villains of the 70s. Strange that a man who is touted for his work on soft-core porn could actually pull out a convincing performance: it's at first seemingly hammed-up, but it's really vicious in that way that's memorable. The rest of the acting ranges from decent to forgettable (two of the girls barely utter a word of dialog for the bulk of the time spent at the cabin), but why carp? Anyone watching Trip with the Teacher is watching it for one thing above all else: skillfully directed trash.
It's better than it has any right to be, but that goes without saying that it knows what it is: this is like one of the rare good pieces of movie-lore that inspired Tarantino and Rodriguez with their pictures: it's unrepentant in its conventions and split of black-and-white, and it's played out to its full extent.