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Trip with the Teacher (1975)
Why not to ride a broken down bus in the desert
Another movie released as part of the Drive-In Cult Classics Collection. This movie involves 2 brothers motorcycling through the southwest who come upon a bus load of girls on a summer trip with a teacher. At the outset, one of the brothers name Pete (Robert Porter) seems somewhat normal. His brother Al (Zalman King), however, is somewhat crazy and apparently had already spent some time in prison. They ride with a third biker Jay (Robert Gribbin) who had stopped to help Pete fix a flat.
The trio of bikers meet up with the bus which has broken down in the desert. Al only has one thing on his mind and that is scoring with the girls. We know he has already killed a garage mechanic. Miss Tenny (Brenda Gogarty) is the teacher traveling with the girls and feels it is her responsibility to protect them as Al gets aggressive. When the bus driver tries to stop Al from harassing the girls, Al and Pete chase him down on their motorcycles and kill him. Al quickly realizes that he can't leave any witnesses around.
Al (who later did some writing, directing and producing for the Red Shoes Diaries), carries the movie as we try to anticipate his next move. But overall, the movie is slow moving with two of the girls not really saying much throughout the movie. Even Pete is disappointing as he gets drunk and just sits around. At the end, Jay tries to be a hero but he needs the help of Miss Tenny to finish off their tormentors.
Best Friends (1975)
"We've been together for so many years..."
Quote is from the Beach Boys tune "Friends" which is what this movie is about. First, let me say off the bat that the movie was watchable given its genre. What kept bugging me, however, was that the character Jesse (Richard Hatch)looked so familiar but I just couldn't place him (until checking IMDb!).
This is a buddy movie between two very close friends who even shared a stint in the air force together. However, Jesse is now ready to settle down while his pal Pat (Doug Chapin) still wants to roam the countryside with his buddy like old times. They cruise the southwest in a rented motor home with their respective girlfriends. Although Jesse plans on marrying his girlfriend Kathy and taking a truck driving job in California, Pat has let his girlfriend Jo Ella know he has no intentions on settling down.
The rest of the movie shows Pat becoming increasingly unstable about Kathy's plans to marry Jesse and he increases his attempt to drive them apart. He eventually gets his girlfriend Jo Ella to sleep with Jesse to further his cause. The end could have been better as Pat causes Jesse to accidentally shoot and kill Kathy. However, we are left with the 3 remaining "friends" just sitting on the beach without wrapping up whether or not Jesse will join Pat in his travels. Jo Ella just hangs around and we are left to wonder what will become of her.
House (1985)
Just short of really entertaining
I know this movie has somewhat of a cult following but I just couldn't bring myself to rate it any higher than I did. It just wasn't scary enough to be a horror flick or funny enough to be entertaining like Evil Dead II. Although I have a pretty wide latitude as to what I'll sit though, I just couldn't bring myself to join the bandwagon.
Believe it or not William Katt plays the starring role in this mid 1980s "horror" flick. The storyline had promise but misses on a few fronts. The old aunt seems to be an early key character but then really falls to the background if not totally out of the storyline. The actress wife also plays too small a role inserted here and there throughout the movie. George Wendt adds the comic relief but again as the nosy neighbor is not used to his potential. Finally is the house haunted or is it just Katt himself?
The story is basically about a house which is involved in the disappearance of Katt's son years ago. After Katt's aunt commits suicide, he decides to move into her house where he had already spent much of his own childhood. He wants to pursue his passion which is writing about his experience in the Vietnam War. It is this war experience that lives at the heart of Katt's weird experiences at the house. Not soon after moving in, he starts to hear and see strange things, primarily at the stroke of midnight. Monsters and other objects (like shovels) are soon attacking him. Katt falls back on his military training to battle the house and its "inhabitants." We eventually get a happy ending as he finally prevails in defeating the "monsters," rescuing his son, and it appears, reuniting with his divorced spouse.
Again, I know many previous writers enjoy this flick but it just wasn't up to even the low bar I often set for these type of flicks.
The Teacher (1974)
Teacher/Student Innocence with a Psycho Twist
I watched "The Teacher" as part of the Drive-in Cult Classics DVD. This one was actually not too bad. The story line of teacher and student relationship is an old one but this movie had two interesting twists: first a psycho neighbor stalking both teacher and student, and second, the boy's mother played by Marlene Schmidt seemed to encourage the relationship. The real surprise was the casting of Jay "the Menace" North as the student. He was around 23 at the time of the movie's release. The teacher is played by Angel Tompkins who along with appearing in many of the cop shows of the day (Ironside, McCloud and Kojak to name a few) was featured in the February 1972 issue of Playboy.
The movie is very watchable for a "Drive-In" movie except for one or two musical interludes. I found Jay's acting a little stiff early on but a few love scenes, or hints of them, kept the movie flowing. The ending was somewhat anticlimactic but also somewhat unexpected.
Pick-up (1975)
Not easy to sit through at the Drive-in or your couch.
Picked up Drive-In Cult Classics and this is the first movie I watched. The movie started off with the potential for an interesting psycho-type adventure. Instead, as mentioned in another review, the movie gets pretty disjointed awfully fast.
Two very attractive women (girls) are pick-up by a dude who is driving a bus which is really a mobile home. They get lost in the everglades and start to experience some weird stuff. Flashbacks and psychic experiences start to make the movie uneven to watch. The ending is consistent with the rest of the movie.
Plenty of gratuitous nudity which back in 1975 I probably appreciated.