If you want a guilty pleasure, this movie is it! It's natural for a student to have a crush on a teacher, especially the one you had on your senior year in high school. There is one teacher, Diane Marshall (Angel Tompkins) who was not only a teacher, she is the neighbor of her now former student, Sean Roberts (Jay North). Sean, is a quiet and reserved young man, who hangs out with his friend, Lou (Rudy Herrera, Jr.). They go out to the harbor where the teacher take her boat out. But she's also being watched by Lou's brother, Ralph (Anthony James), a former military man who has an unhealthy obsession with the teacher. During the day, Ralph catches them spying on the teacher, and Lou is accidentally killed. In the meantime, Diane began to set her sights on Sean. She was married to a drifter, and was never around her. So she became bored, and love-starved. Sean was very shy, but later on, Diane began to open him up more. In a nice afternoon scene, she has her shower after a day in the pool. Sean gets a lesson in love he'll never forget. Even though reluctant, he gave in to her, without a fight. But they have to be cautious, Lou's crazy brother stalks the couple, and Sean manages to send him back. A very intense movie here. It's great for all the cult followers out there. Recommendable! 4 out of 5 stars

This teacher-student seduction/psycho stalker tale starts out well enough that I actually thought it was going to be a genuinely good movie (as opposed to good sleaze) but is fairly quickly derailed by almost uniformly horrendous acting and some fairly idiotic plot developments. Still, the opening is memorable: a quick pan from a boat in a harbor with the name "Diane" to a dilapidated 3 or 4 story industrial building facing the docks, and a close-up on the crazy face of Ralph (Anthony James), closing up a red coffin that he keeps in a half-open room on the top floor. Ralph races downstairs to his white, circa 1960 hearse (the coffin/hearse thing are never explained) and off to stop outside of a school. There he witnesses Diane (Angel Tompkins) say goodbye to 2 boys, but Ralph only has eyes for the beautiful young teacher, as the title comes up and the terribly cheesy theme song "The Teacher", sung by Jackie Ward, makes the first of many appearances. Ralph waits for Diane to leave and follows her blue Corvette (Diane's got quite the lifestyle for a high school teacher) home, waiting outside her suburban house while she changes and then following her again. She notices at one point and stops, trying to confront him but he speeds past, soon arriving back at the industrial complex and heading to the top floor where he will spy on Diane in her eponymously-named boat sunbathing topless. Yes, Angel Tompkins' rack is the major draw here, and a fine one it is. But Ralph is interrupted in his salacious activity by the appearance of the two young men we saw a few minutes earlier, who hop off a motorcycle and make their way to his secret spot while he hides. Turns out one of them is Ralph's brother Lou (Rudy Herrera) and the other his best friend Sean (Jay North, not getting the best work since his halcyon TV "Dennis the Menace" days and looking very much like a smaller-framed John Schneider here); Lou has found the hiding place and the two proceed to spy on Diane until surprised by Ralph, at which point a shocked Lou falls to his death! Ralph blames Sean for Lou's death, and proceeds to chase him with a bayonet, but Sean gets away.The rest of the film essentially alternates between Diane's seduction of Sean - who has graduated, so I guess that makes it a little more OK - and Ralph's attempts both the revenge himself on Sean and to get a little special time with Diane. Sean has a fairly stereotypical family life, with a father who wants him to be working all the time and an indulgent mother (both very, very bady acted) but somehow seems to have time to do the nasty with Diane as often as possible (more gratuitous nudity, please). There's one particularly fascinating scene where the two lovers go to a bar - Sean is obviously underaged but the bartender serves Diane multiple bottles of wine which she shares with him - and they are spied on by a couple of old ladies who are horrified at the "over 40" Diane (she's actually 28) seducing the kid. The two old ladies are played by the Katherine Cassavetes and Lady Rowlands, mothers of John and Gena, very bizarre, and the bar is just exactly the perfect 70s suburban bar. Both Sean and Diane are completely sloshed but manage to make it home in Diane's corvette with no acknowledgment that drunk driving is dangerous - this would never happen in PC 2009.The ending is pretty cool too, though not very well shot or choreographed, as Ralph kidnaps Sean and takes him to his hideout, choking him to death, but is followed by Diane who allows herself to be raped on top of the coffin but in the middle of it grabs Ralph's bayonet and stabs him to death! I thought for sure that Sean would turn out to still be alive, but he's not and the film ends with Diane weeping - again, kind of atypical.All in all, lots of fun with very bad easy listening/lounge/muzak instrumental score and the stupid theme song popping up several times, good SoCal suburban and industrial locations, and an interesting if not terribly talented cast making for an interesting slice-of-exploitation life circa 35 years ago.

This would have received 1 star but Angel Tompkins' bare breasts are worth at least one star by themselves. If there had been more bare breasts, I would have added more stars.The Teacher is a morality tale. Societies should beware of single women. They'll seduce our innocent sons and drive our already insane vets into homicidal rages.Though this movie was made in the 1970s, its temporal setting is the 1950s. Not only is Diane, the teacher, single, but she's divorced. One of her friends hints at how sexually frustrated Diane must be with her husband gone. Clearly there's nothing a woman can do to relieve her sexual frustrations without a man.Diane is so oblivious that her breasts are responsible for the deaths of three people. First one of her two infatuated students dies while looking at her bare breasts in the harbor. (I've spent a lot of time on and around the water and I've never seen a bare breast.) Then his friend is killed by the insane brother of his dead friend who happens to be a veteran. Then she kills the friend's insane veteran brother as he's raping her. (I guess that one she knows what's going on.)The sex scenes are bizarre. When Diane takes Sean's virginity, he has his pants on. The scene is the least tender sex scene I've seen. She isn't "making love" with him. She's raping him. It's written all over her face. He seems to enjoy it. (What 18 year old boy wouldn't?) When she asks him if he wants to do it again, he tells her, "Once is enough." (Okay, so one 18 year old boy wouldn't.)They leave their pants on when they swap bodily fluids on her boat. She and Ralph both have pants on when Ralph rapes her.I guess the moral should be, "Don't trust divorced women. They'll seduce our sons and teach them how to dry hump."If this movie was better known, it would challenge Ed Wood's "Plan 9" for the Golden Turkey.

Got this as part of a Grindhouse double feature DVD and found it to be a fun representation of 70's exploitation. The movie tag line says something about the teacher (Diane, played by Angel Tompkins) corrupting the school with her "lessons". In fact, during the movie, the fact that she is a teacher is very much downplayed. This is not a movie about a horny young high school teacher who screws her way through the male students. It is actually a love story/soft-core/stalker drama.The movie is very awkward in places, especially the love scenes, and the fight sequences. Remember, this is still a "B" movie. The plot deals with a teenage boy (Sean) fresh out of high school and the hot teacher who comes on to him. For suspense they add a storyline about a dead friend and the friend's demented brother who is in love with the teacher as well.The whole thing is harmless really. Liberal breast action from Ms. Tompkins keeps things titillating, but the acting is totally ham-fisted by all, especially Sean's father. Much has been made about Jay North's role, but I think the movie would have been better without him. He basically sucks.Thirty plus years later seeing The Teacher gives one a good idea what kind of seedy movies teens were trying to sneak into in the early 70's. There is an innocence about the movie that is refreshing. It does not set out to shock and it is not mean spirited. Just an interesting way to spend an evening. The Teacher is a must for 70's exploitation buffs not looking for a major shock, but rather a slice of sleaze gone by.