one of my absolute favorites!

Lack of good storyline.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Four teenage girls and their lady-teacher crossing the desert on a strictly educational tour of ancient America. And a couple of bikers whose minds seem to be on something rather less edifying. It sounds like a recipe for a porn film, though if you want nudity and explicit sex, you'll be disappointed. But don't worry, there's still enough gratuitous violence and sadism to shock your parents. Because that's the level we're at - basically schoolboy fantasy.The little group is faced with everybody's worst desert nightmare, a breakdown in the middle of nowhere, little guessing that the nightmares have hardly started. The two bikers seem rather like the Kray Twins of 60's London, one totally mad (in sci-fi-bug wraparound sunglasses), egging-on a more placid brother. Soon they pull up beside the minibus, and offer to tow it to the service-station. But instead they abduct their captives to a deserted house, where they inflict unspeakable humiliations on them.None of the four girls carry any conviction whatever, except at the scream-queen moments. Even at the beginning, when it's mostly small-talk, they seem to be reading the lines, not playing them. And imprisoned in the house of horrors, they just sit there like guests at a dull party. We know that one of them is meant to be openly randy, and a second one is a puritan virgin. But the other two could be tailors' dummies, for all we discover about them. Brenda Fogarty as the teacher puts a bit more into it, but they missed their chance to cast a proper schoolmarm fantasy-figure. Fogarty just looks like the girl next door.And more faults, perhaps not worth lingering-on. Countless missed opportunities for the girls to escape. The teacher eventually killing the villain by running him through with an iron bar, not too feasible really. Some unsubtle feeding-in of loud birdsong, as though we'd forgotten we were in the wilds. And a terrible ending, with ghostly stuck-on grins by the survivors.Zalman King as the mad brother is the power behind the film, and he went on to become quite a well-known writer/director. At a time when the exploits of Charles Manson were still vivid in the American mind, King seems to have been trying to replicate those wild mood-swings - snarling savagery one moment, spaced-out mumbling the next.Good enough for 16-year old boys, longing to listen-in on girlie-talk and fantasizing about power of life and death over five vulnerable females.

I can't help but feel that this was Earl Barton's magnum opus, his great artistic statement to the world and an announcement of a great new film-making talent. He wrote the film, directed it, and produced it. He even did some of the music! Yes, this was truly Earl Barton's own Citizen Kane. Why, there's even an "Introducing the Actors" type end credit sequence straight out of Kane! But of course, it was not to be. The first hour of this film is incredibly dull, as the conflict doesn't arise until the last 30 minutes of the film. The performances are mostly dull, so it's difficult to care about the characters. Likewise, the film never quite reaches the same dizzying, sadistic heights of films like The Last House on the Left or The House on the Edge of the Park! The fact that the cast is all smiles by the end of the film and share a group hug is indicative of how goofy this film turned out. The film's saving grace comes in the performance of Zalman King, who is truly one of the most disgusting and despicable villains to grace the screen, sort of a precursor to Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth. While not without its flaws, the performance sells the character's sadism and insanity quite well, and it's obvious that King completely threw himself into the role. Clearly he was going for the Oscar! Thanks to King's performance, as well as some of the film's goofier touches, this still manages to be decent entertainment. If trash auteur Barton had merely cut out most of the screenplay's filler and just cut to the chase, we might have had a real gem on our hands!

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.

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.