TRIP WITH THE TEACHER a/k/a DEADLY FIELD TRIP (1975)

If you ever wanted to see motorcycles and a school bus being gassed up in excruciating detail, you've found your movie.

Four high-school kids—Debbie, Pam, Bobbie, and Julie—are taking a field to Mexico with their teacher, Miss Tenny. (We never learn why their school authorized a field trip that small, but never mind.) Trouble begins when their bus breaks down in the desert. Soon, the girls are brutalized by brothers Pete and Al, a pair of sadistic bikers. Also present is Jay, a third biker who met the brothers when he stopped to aid Pete with a flat tire. Jay is the good guy who tries to save the girls from the other two—but not before Al succeeds in raping both Ms. Tenny and Bobbie, and murdering both Tina and Marvin (the bus driver).

TRIP WITH THE TEACHER has some of the stiffest dialogue I've ever heard. For example, there's this exchange early on between Miss Tenny and one of the girls:

“Do any Indians still live out there?”
“Why yes, they do.”
“Oh, boy! Maybe we'll see some. Wouldn't that be interesting?”

But as stiffly written as the dialogue was, it's even more stiffly delivered by a cast of unknowns with names like Brenda Fogarty, Robert Gribbin, Dina Ously, and Cathy Worthington. The sole exception is Zalman King, whose portrayal of the psychotic Al goes in the opposite direction. He chews enough scenery to merit extensive dental work.

This is typical 1970s exploitation fare: badly written, acted, and directed; grainy picture quality; only a handful of sets; repetitive score; tons of sexism and misogyny; Alaska-sized plot holes; and graphic violence that doesn't look remotely genuine. The rape scenes are hard to watch, but I really couldn't take the film seriously enough to hate it for that.

Item: When Jay flees the scene, Pete chases after him, forcing Jay and his bike off a cliff. However, an unharmed Jay magically reappears at the end to exact vengeance. His bike is undamaged too.

Item: When Ms. Tenny and Tina are alone with each other, the teacher implores the girl to run away and seek help. It occurs to neither that two unguarded motorcycles are sitting not ten feet away.

Item: Al pursues Tina into the desert, catching the girl and choking her to death. He deposits her corpse in a nearby river, where it washes away—to, I assume, eventually be discovered. Our boy Al is not what you'd call a criminal mastermind.

Item: The film ends with the surviving women grinning idiotically, as if they weren't just privy to two rapes and five murders.