A quirky leading man in the shortlived ABC series THE YOUNG LAWYERS and in little-seen independent pictures like THE SKI BUM and YOU’VE GOT TO WALK IT LIKE YOU TALK IT OR YOU’LL LOSE THAT BEAT (!), King’s only direction from Barton appears to have been, “Chew the walls. And the floors and the ceilings and anything else not nailed down.” It’s an unhinged turn by either a great actor who believed TRIP WITH THE TEACHER was a ticket to big things and a bad actor who needed more guidance than Earl Barton could provide.
Plot by writer/director/producer Barton finds sexy schoolteacher Brenda Fogarty (FANTASM COMES AGAIN) on a field trip with four sexy students played by Cathy Worthington (Kenny Rogers’ THE GAMBLER telefilms), Dina Ousley (AMERICAN HOT WAX), Jill Voigt (FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2), and Susie Russell. When their short bus breaks down in the Mojave Desert, King, his slightly less evil brother Robert Porter (THE KLANSMAN), and their new traveling companion Robert Gribbin (the serial killer in the hilarious HITCH HIKE TO HELL) waylay the group, kill the punchdrunk bus driver (Jack Driscoll), and take Fogarty and her students to an abandoned house for rape, torture, and humiliation.
A desert motorcycle chase between Porter and Gribben is the film’s major action piece, which is made more exciting by the impression that the actors are doing their own stunts over shaky ground (and actually crashing, a happy accident). TRIP is actually less sleazy than Barton’s premise would indicate, which spares the audience the discomfort of watching Fogarty play a rape scene (but not the brutalization leading up to it). Besides King and Fogarty, who is pretty decent for an actress specializing in softcore cinema, the players are adequate at best, but good enough that you feel sympathy for the good characters who die. The script doesn’t work well. The bikers have no guns and could easily be overpowered by the captors or unable to prevent them from escaping (granted, the girls would be on foot in the middle of the desert).
King later claimed TRIP was the worst film he ever did (debatable) and his favorite role. The budget was a mere $31,000, and the shooting schedule was 13 days. Certainly the laughable library score chosen from Igo Kantor's collection didn’t cost much. Barton wrote the catchy theme that is repeated ad nauseum. Crown certainly got its money’s worth out of TRIP, re-releasing it in theaters and on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray several times, often under different titles, including DEADLY FIELD TRIP. King gave up acting not many years later for a new career as a producer and director of erotic (R-rated) films, such as WILD ORCHID and TWO MOON JUNCTION, and Showtime’s RED SHOE DIARIES.
2 comments:
I just saw it for the second time ever. It's funny how Porter is made up to resemble Dennis Hopper in EASY RIDER.
“King gave up acting not many years later”
I had to look up when Trip with the Teacher was made to see if Galaxy of Terror (1981), where I first saw King, was close to when Trip was made. And yes: Trip was made in 1975, which surprised me because the poster looks like it’s a drive-in movie from ten years earlier! :-)
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