Vice Academy

My review was written in March 1989 after watching the movie on Prism video cassette.

It takes a quickie, direct-to-video pic like "Vice Academy" to make the latter day "Police Academy" series look good.

Former porn star Ginger Lynn Allen teams up with current softcore star Linnea Quigley as warring police cadets studying to join the L. A. vice squad. Pic limns their unfunny (nor for lack of trying) misadventures as prostitutes, porn stars, etc., to entrap unsuspecting sleazeballs.

The two blonde leads are nice to look at, while newcomer Karen Russell amply fills the tease genre gap left by her namesake Betsy Russell. Filmmaker Rick Sloane's most daring motif is spoofing another ex-porn starlet Traci Lords, but effort is generally puerile.

Vice Academy was the only one in the series I've ever seen and for good reason: IT'S AWFUL! A parody of the unfunny Police Academy movies, this features a bunch of students training to be in the vice squad. Through a pastiche of cheap sets, horrid acting, horrible wardrobe, and a lack of the one thing that could have saved it (plentiful nudity), this film crashes and burns. I guess the only good part that I saw when I wasn't pressing fast forward was the scene featuring Vice Academy and Soap Opera regular Tamara Clatterbuck's character of Tinsel, the first prostitute that the students tried to bust (their goal in the movie was to eliminate a prostitution ring to pass the course), and how they trick her to admit that she's a hooker; I especially laughed at how she went from sweet-natured to Carlin. Otherwise, stay away.

In order to graduate from a law enforcement school known as the Vice Academy each of the students are required to arrest a certain number of criminals prior to a set date. One of them, "Holly Wells" (Ginger Lynn) has a huge advantage because her father just happens to be the Chief of Police and gives her all of the resources available to him to be used at her convenience. Unfortunately, she is hardly discreet about it and cheerfully boasts about her successes to everyone else in the classroom. This especially annoys three of her less-fortunate classmates named "Didi" (Linnea Quigley), "Shawnee" (Karen Russell) and "Dwayne" (Ken Abraham) who are having great difficulty trying to pass. So with essentially nothing to lose the three of them concoct a plan to apprehend a notorious prostitution ring which has managed to defeat the entire police force to date. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a crude, low-budget comedy which contained a ridiculous plot and less-than-stellar acting. Yet even with these drawbacks it still managed to be somewhat entertaining all the same. I honestly cannot explain why but I thought some of the scenes were quite amusing. That said, I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.

Years ago I rented this flick because Linnea Quigley is in it. I was surprised as I really liked the cast: Ginger Lynn Allen, Karen Russell, Jay Richardson and Ken Abraham. BUT, my favorite is Jayne Hamil who plays "Ms. Devonshire", every time she was on-screen she made me laugh in a good way.

Yes, this is a rip-off of "Police Academy", but you know what? I found this lower budgeted flick funnier. What can I say. I love B-movies.

Basically this is about three friends (Linnea, Karen and Ken) who join the police academy. Ginger plays the bitch of the class by the way. For them to graduate they have to arrest a certain number of criminals which means Linnea goes undercover to bust porno filmmakers who hire under age actresses and of course wackiness ensues.

I don't know why the bad reviews, if you don't like low budget flicks stay away from it. If you are a Linnea fan, check it out. She's funny and sexy.

I liked it so much, I bought me VHS copy and I also own parts 2 & 3.

"Vice Academy" is purportedly a sex comedy spoof of "Police Academy", which was itself a spoof, I guess. What's funny is that for a sex comedy version of that movie, it probably has less nudity than it, and of course, no sex.

I don't know what those involved were thinking. This one boasts not only b-movie starlet and scream queen Linnea Quigley, who is still most famous for her naked graveyard dance in "Return of the Living Dead", but also a bona fide porn star in Ginger Lynn Allen. So why no sex and hardly any nudity? American sex comedies never show any sex, so it's no surprise that there's none to be had here. But why barely any nudity?

It seems like the filmmakers were having too much fun making the movie to include anything that might make you want to watch. The whole thing has this feeling as though everybody involved thought they were being hilarious. Perhaps they were laughing at us for watching this garbage, expecting a good time?

I might as well summarise the plot, or at least the set-up (there's no plot, really). It's about a class of bimbos apparently learning to be vice cops, which means they have the freedom to go out and play dress-up and pretend to be prostitutes or johns or whatever. Eventually they meet a madam named Queen Bee, with a huge beehive hairdo, who I guess is supposed to be the main bad guy. The dialogue is delivered in this weird stilted way, like every line is a wonder to the ear, and the soundtrack mickey-mouses everything out the wazoo, as though these are jokes that need underlining.

But where are the jokes?