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Trip with the Teacher aka "Deadly Fieldtrip" (1975)

Dir: Earl Barton

A group of teenage students (Susie Russell, Cathy Worthington, Jill Voigt), including the fiery Bobbie (Dina Ousley), are on a desert tour/camping trip with their Teacher (Brenda Fogarty) and bus driver Marvin (Jack Driscoll).

On the road they bump into three guys on bikes, Jay (Robert Gribbin) and two Brothers named Al (Zalman King) and Pete (Robert Porter, “The Jesus Trip“) whom Jay has just met up with.
Both Al and Pete have an arrogant streak and Al comes across as particularly ruthless.

When the bus breaks down Al makes a pass at Bobbie and gets violent when her Teacher intervenes.
A seething Al then says they will tow the bus to help.
With a nervous Jay looking on Al and Pete actually tow the bus into the middle of nowhere, with a deserted old shack being the only sign of civilisation.

Despite Jay’s protests Al and Pete now start to terrorise and threaten the women. Threats that turn deadly, leaving the women at the mercy of the psychotic Al and his Brother….

This forgotten slice of 70’s Drive-In sleaze (supposedly made for just $11,000) may not be a lost classic but it’s certainly good enough to interest any Exploitation fan.
Despite the slack opening 15 minutes or so (where twee music twiddles on as we have lots of footage of the guys riding bikes and the girls sitting in the bus watching them ride bikes) the film is a fast paced little exercise in politically incorrect goings-on.

The main attraction here is Zalman King (who was also rather good in the cult item “Blue Sunshine”, Jeff Lieberman’s tale of bald LSD nutters on the rampage) a good few years before he made the move behind the camera to make a small fortune directing and/or producing such glossy soft-core trash as “Two Moon Junction”, “The Red Show Diaries”, “Wild Orchid” and the Granddaddy trash fest of them all, “Nine ½ Weeks”.
With his wrap-around shades, that make him look like a psychotic fly, and dirty leer he makes for a wonderfully theatrical villain from the start, even before he starts to speak and carry out his dastardly deeds.
Al is the type of guy who says things like “You’ll be surprised what a piece of ass will do for my disposition” to a Teacher while eyeing up her students. He’s not a classy guy!

And King gives a wonderfully scummy performance to essay his nasty character and rips up the scenery with gusto.
You have to love such scenes as him he violently swinging at the girls with a branch to corral them back into the shack and the moment when he repeatedly screams “You son of bitch” before punching the hell out of the walls, dropping to his knees, grabbing his head and wailing!
Sure it’s an overtly melodramatic performance, that’s drawn with broad strokes, but it still makes for a really effective Exploitation villain.

Al also brings up the essential violent (and sexually violent) aspects of such a tale.
There’s certainly a cruelty to the violence and assaults seen here and King plays such scenes to the hilt, having his character explode with a rage that’s almost a sexual release during the actual violent acts which is then followed by an almost childlike regression.
The film also makes sure deaths look like the hard work they are. A suffocation is shown to take time and need real force, a strangulation is shown to take strength and to be a drawn out way to die (in a scene that’s pretty powerful because the victim is being stared at by a third party as they try to fight their inevitable fate).
There’s also a brutal (if bloodless) scene where a guy has his head run over by a bike. All in all it’s just violent enough and uses the violence in a realistic way.

The nudity is sparse but used effectively and the scene where one of the women has her clothes ripped off her by the cackling Al before being raped (off screen) , is full-on gratuitous exploitation but a later moment of consoling between two of the women is surprisingly sensitive in it the way it‘s handled, thus making the assault far more powerful.

The women are of course all older than the title of the film would lead you to believe (as in “Schoolgirls in Chains“) and are your typically strident 70‘s teens. Even the virgin of the group (Susie Russell) spits out lines like “You’re just a horny little bitch” when arguing with Bobbie.
Dina Ousley actually does a very good job as Bobbie and takes her character from a loud and brash nympho to a brave and ballsy young woman when she tries to use Al‘s lust for her to save them all, as shown during a shockingly blunt, and well written , conversation between the frightened girls;
Bobbie: “As long as that dude’s thinking about my ass our chances of getting out of hear are much better”
Girl: “How you going to do that”
Bobbie: “On my back”.

Brenda Fogarty (who would go on to appear in a handful of soft-core trash flicks) is also impressive as the Teacher and handles some of the more exploitative moments very well, as her character tries to be strong for the rest of the girls.
The only really bad turn comes from Driscoll as Marvin the rather slow bus driver. It's pretty damn shabby and it's hard to tell if that's how he delivers his lines of if he's trying to make his character seem slow and monosyllabic. I sadly don't think he's that astute a performer though!

There's also some nice location footage that adds to the hot, dusty, lonseome situation the women find themselves in. The driving/bike scenes are also handled very well.

The main problem with the film is the score, which is mostly pretty lousy (although we do have a couple of funky cues) with music that sounds like it was stolen from a 70’s TV show, it even rises in crescendo at dramatic points that makes it sound like the commercial break is about to happen!
It’s a score that genuinely damages certain scenes.
A fast and well done motorbike chase for example, is only let down by the Saturday Afternoon Serial style music that plays over it.

So this is a very slight film that has nothing big to say or has any pretensions to greatness. But it’s overall a solid Exploitation thriller (lousy score aside) that benefits from a wonderfully entertaining turn by King who ensures that the film has a strong character at it’s heart to keep things going when the very slight plot stalls.
Nothing earth shattering, but certainly a film that Drive-In/Grindhouse fans will want to track down.