Trip With The Teacher (1975)
I don't know exactly
why--although I could easily discourse on my suspicions at length,
exploring my relative age at the time and my psychological
temperament--but these old drive-in movie flicks are always SO much
better in my memories than they are upon re-watching. So it is with Trip With The Teacher,
starring Brenda Fogarty (as The Teacher), Dina Ousley (as the slutty
student), Jill Voigt (as the random mousy student), and two more gals
who did not get naked or assaulted and therefore don't count. It also
stars, as the psychotic biker dude, Zalman King. I liked his work on Red Shoe Diaries, Two Moon Junction and Wild Orchid a lot more than his
acting in this flick, which proves--to me, anyway--he is much better
behind the camera than in front of it.
The movie begins with the brightly colored titles in that "70's
Credits" font so reminiscent of drive-in movies, 70's TV series, and
those ghastly made-for-TV movies. Honestly, it is the quintessential
70's drive-in movie beginning, and so evocative of a simpler and
cheesier time that I wanted to walk through the rolling drive-in movie
parking lot and overpay for stale popcorn. *sigh*
So we have a short bus (that should tell you something right there) on
a cross-country field trip with a moderately attractive teacher and
four teenage girls, a bus driver who is dumber than dirt, and three
biker dudes, of which two are crazy brothers. The craziest (and
horniest) brother is Zalman King, wearing some sunglasses that I think
he stole from the head bad guy biker dude in The Born Losers (which was
technically the first Billy Jack
movie), because they are very distinctive and borderline stupid
looking. I guess 70's biker dudes just didn't know any better.
 
The plot develops for 45 minutes before we get any action. At that
point the two bad biker dudes have the teacher and four students held
hostage and the slutty girl decides she will seduce Zalman King. He
decides to humiliate her by ordering her to strip in front of him (and
everyone, actually). She timidly removes her top (no bra) and shorts,
but because of camera angles and strategically placed arms, we see no
bare breasts. That's a long time to wait for no bare breasts.
 
But wait, the teacher gets into the act, attacking Zalman King, and at
47:30 he drags her into the back room and slams her around, whips her
with a belt, rips off her clothes leaving her completely nude, then
pushes her down to the floor and rapes her. We see bare breasts and
butt, but the scene ends before there's any actual non-consensual sex.
The mousiest girl goes back to see if the teacher is okay and the
teacher sends her out the window with instructions to find the police.
Now, they are out in the middle of nowhere, and of the four girls, this
one was voted most likely to fail in an escape attempt, but there you
have it. Zalman King chases her down in a protracted chase scene and I
guess because she is the least sexy of the four women (although she has
the advantage of youth over the teacher), he does not rape her. He
tears her blouse, pushes her face down in the sand and suffocates her,
in a frenzy of emoting and overacting that is embarrassing to watch.
Then he carries her back to the stream and places her dead body in six
whole inches of water, expecting the current to take her away. And,
unbelievably, it does. The only bright spot in this whole ludicrous
sequence is that once she is placed in the water, the current pulls her
torn top and exposes her breast and erect nipple.
 
Zalman King returns, yells at his brother for being so stupid that he
hasn't raped a single girl yet, and proceeds to show him how it is
done. He pulls off the slutty girl's shorts and panties, then plops
down on top of her and she is raped off-camera while we hear her make
passable "being raped" sounds and see reaction shots from the other
girls.
That's it for GIMP. One forced strip in which we see no naughty bits,
one teacher rape with full nudity but we cut away before we see or hear
any seriously non-consensual sex going on, one chase and suffocation in
the sand, with postmortem nipple exposure, and one no-nudity or visual
activity rape of the slutty student. All of the elements are there, but
it just doesn't deliver. It gets a C- for GIMP, purely on
the strength of the weak teacher rape.
The IMDB entry is here. I got my copy of
this flick in the "Drive-in
Cult Classics" collection from Amazon, which is currently selling
for $5.99, which is not a bad price for a collection of eight movies,
another of which is The
Teacher.
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