Tuesday 1 July 2008

Vice Academy (1988)

'You've got to be kidding!' says the drug dealer called Snake. Why, you ask? Because he's getting busted by Ginger Lynn, that's why. Erm, Ginger Lynn Allen, she was going legit at this point, if you can call legit starring in a Police Academy ripoff directed by Rick Sloane. Rick Sloane was not a good director and he didn't make good films, but somehow everything that carried his name became some sort of guilty pleasure. This one proved so successful that it spawned no less than five sequels, perhaps in an attempt to catch up with the Police Academy franchise itself.

It's no brighter, that's for sure. The cleverest this film gets is to have a Vice Academy that has one guy in a class full of eighties bimbos. Most of it is on the level of an academy recruit pulling her top down to disarm an assailant, repeated practice at kneeing that token guy in the balls and even sticking a 'Vice Cop' poster on the back of one recruit. Given that the bimbos include Ginger Lynn, former porno queen, and Linnea Quigley, eighties scream queen, you can imagine just how much fun this is and how cheesy it is too. This is the sort of film that would have a soap opera actress who dated Weird Al Yankovic playing a hooker. She's Tamara Clatterbuck aka Tami Bakke, and she's far from the only actress working under a pseudonym.

Lynn is Holly Wells, daughter of the police chief, and while she's a bimbo, she's a bimbo who effectively has the entire police force at her beck and call. Quigley is Didi, who is even more of a bimbo but who finally finds a cause to fight for, along with her buddies, Shawnee and Dwayne, when she meets Cherry Pop on the streets. She's an underage porno actress who escaped the business to make her own exercise video, only to get beaten up by someone hired by her director. So Didi goes undercover as Didi Fluffer, to star in a film called Chafed Raw with a co-star called Chucky Long. Naturally things don't go quite as expected.

I remember this as being fun but bad, and it definitely fits that description. It's really cheesy, all the way down to Queen Bee's outrageous hairstyle, especially with some truly awesome bad dialogue. Watch Shawnee and Dwayne struggle to keep the loose ropes on while tied to a couple of chairs. Watch Ginger Lynn giggle at porn star jokes. Watch Cliff Corder, the most unbelievable police chief in film history. Watch a graduation ceremony given by no less than two people. Watch Rick Sloane try desperately to keep us believe we're on location at a real police academy while not showing us a single thing that remotely resembles anything you'd see at a real police academy. I swear he made this in a public park. The script is a step above an episode of Bibleman but not by much. But hey, what fun! It's perfect for late night viewing with pizza, beer or even just the right company.

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