The heyday of the drive in began with low budget horror flicks and eventually morphed into low budget T&A movies. The films almost always took on some form of profession from student nurses to cheerleaders to teachers. Surprisingly while the titles may have made it seem that those in these chosen professions had the loosest of morals the films themselves actually were a bit more twisted. Yes, the characters were placed in definite misogynistic settings but they were also the most independent women on the planet. In the end while bad things happened they came out stronger, more self-aware and better off than their male counterparts.All of that can be seen in TRIP WITH THE TEACHER. The name itself sounds like a low grade porn flick but it is far from it. The movie features a teacher on a field trip with a group of female students. Their destination is the desert area of the southwest. Side by side with their adventure is a motorcyclist who teams up with two other young bikers, brothers, one of which has a flat. What he doesn't realize is that one of them tends to lean towards anti-social psychopathic tendencies.Their paths cross as they pass the bus and the girls flirt with them. When both end up at the next gas station they chat, the girls flirt some more and then head out on their way. Al (Zalman King), the psycho brother, kills the station attendant who was giving them a hard time without telling the other two, and their on their way.The girl's bus breaks down and the cyclists offer to help them. At least they claim to. Instead they kill the driver, assault the girls and eventually rape the teacher who offers herself up if they'll leave the girls alone. The third biker isn't part of this and is attacked by the brothers and left for dead. Now if only the girls can find a way to escape.The movie features everything that those drive in movies looked for. We have sexy young girls, none of which looks under 25 even though they're playing teens. We have psycho bikers because hey, all bikers must be psychos right? Well with the exception of the one riding the old style motorcycle. We have a secluded location which works out great since the budget is miniscule at best. And the end result involves a form of revenge which was a classic plot device in these films.The movie looks much like it would have on the large whitewashed screens of the drive in with little attention paid to focus or a decent film stock that would have provided a better picture. But these movies weren't made as art. They were quickly written, quickly shot no budget films that made back more than their investment playing from one end of the country to another. This one is a bit less than most which makes me think it was the second half of a double bill along the way.The acting is high school level at best. Like I said, no one seems to fit the age that they are portraying. King always seemed to play characters like this one so his showing up here allows the audience to know right off the start he's the bad guy. His is the only character that really stands out here seeming like a method actor looking for some method to play the part.With all that being said this is another of the films saved by Vinegar Syndrome. No, this isn't CITIZEN KANE in that it deserves major restoration and placed in a locked vault. But the movie itself depicts the type of film being made when it was released, a style of film made specifically for drive ins. The film company behind it, Crown International Pictures, was a company that made tons of movies for drive ins. They may not have been the best of the best but their history deserves to be preserved.Vinegar Syndrome is presenting the film in the best way possible with plenty of extras on hand. To begin with the film is a 2k restoration from a 16mm original camera negative. There is a commentary track with director Earl Barton, actress Cathy Worthington and actress Dina Ousley, TAKING THE TRIP a video with actress Brenda Fogarty who plays the teacher, multiple TV spots, a still gallery and reversible cover artwork.If you're a fan of drive in or grindhouse films then this is yet another film to add to your collection.

I finally saw "Trip With Teacher" on my wonderful five dollar K Mart "Grindhouse Greats" collection. Some observations that have not yet been made. There are some complex, if strange ideas bouncing around this seemingly real dumb movie. First, Zalman's character, if viewed objectively, seems to be trying to stay out of trouble, yet circumstance seems to keep dragging him and his annoying little laugh into trouble. Early on he makes a play and tries to grab the the teacher's breast, which might have been enough to have them write him off. Yet they keep INVOLVING him..... The "hero" is a real wuss who could basically saved the day at anytime. His survival of a (well staged) fall to his death is not believable. But if he got up, why doesn't he go for the cops in the first place.The strange scene where Zalman smothers the nicest of the good girls to death, and seems to have an a sexual climax without undressing. Murder is sex to this guy, I guess. The teacher is all happy at the end and seems to have completely forgotten about the murdered girl or the dead bus driver for that matter. Is She the real bad guy? All in all, an interesting low budget affair.

Zalman King is known today, if he's known at all, as the purveyor (producer-writer-director) of sleazy softcore smut like Red Shoe Diaries - in the early-mid 90s a "Zalman King" film definitely had some meaning in the straight-to-video market, I can tell you.But in the 70s, Zalman King was a struggling actor doing guest shots on network TV series, and appearing in cheesy low-budget exploitation films like Trip With Teacher. Here he's Al, very tall and hook-nosed but otherwise a near dead-ringer for Bono (well, for Bono 15 years later), a creepy and mentally deranged biker who with his more sane but no less unpleasant brother Pete (Robert Porter) is stuck by the side of the road at the beginning of the flick. The brothers have bike problems, but they're soon bailed out by nice-guy motorcyclist Jay (Robert Gribbin) who gets Pete's bike going well enough to get them to the next service station.Along the way the three bikers come upon a school bus with several young women - coy waving and less-coy glances from the 2 brothers for a bit, then all stop at the gas station. I think you might be able to guess where this is headed....if it were made 10-15 years later you'd expect a bloody horror film, but back in these pre-Friday the 13th and Halloween days it's just going to be the two creepy guys trying to have their way with the cute girls and get rid of nice-guy Jay and bus driver Marvin (Jack Driscoll). It's all rather long and tedious - bus breaks down, bikers tow it to near a deserted shack, get rid of driver, seemingly get rid of Jay....and all fairly stupid and silly (how dumb are the girls, Jay and the driver that they don't see that the brothers are sickos? and sickos without any weapons apart from one switchblade...but overpowering them would have been too easy and we wouldn't have a movie and an excuse for some nude scenes) until the kind of cool ending as Jay comes back seemingly from the dead and shows that he's a Real Man after all.The weakest of the three films on the "Drive-in Cult Classics" box set that I've seen so far, but worth it for the cool ending and for King's deranged and freaky portrayal of Al, with one of the creepiest snickering laughs I've ever heard.

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.