Vice Academy (1989) Poster

(1989)

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3/10
Hey, Nobody Was Expecting Shakespeare Here!
DanzWMe2 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Ok so you shouldn't be expecting Shakespeare when you see Ginger Lynn and Linnea Quigley as the leads but for what this was, it worked!

Yes, it's major 80s cheesetastic and overloaded camp-a-palooza but it has its moments. The best part of this was Linnea Quigley. She really carried this movie. She was super funny, had great comedic timing, and of course delivered on her sexpot persona. I'm pretty much a Linnea fan since her infamous role as Trash in Return of the Living Dead. She was hilarious in that too.

Not sure if this was Ginger Lynn's 1st or 2nd mainstream role after leaving adult movies but it felt like it was her 1st. Her acting was horrible and stiff. She felt spaced out or something. She was much better in Vice Academy Part 2 though and even made me laugh lots of times watching it.

This was a very very low budget production and there are many instances where that is evident but it made me laugh and cringe at the same time. I'm a B movie fan and it's Bs like this one that keep me coming back for more. However, I don't think I watched any other sequels after this beyond Part 2 & Part 3. After 3, I'd had enough because they screwed the pooch big time in not bringing Linnea Quigley back.

I remember watching this for the first time in the early to mid 1990s and I think I saw it on USA Network's Up All Night series. I ended up hunting down Vice Academy 2 back then to see if it was as funny and it delivered in spots as well. 2 was way more cheesy & dumbed down but it was watchable to a point. Whenever I see Vice Academy showing somewhere, I make a point to re-watch it and it never disappoints in giving me a hardy guffaw.

There are two scenes that always have me rolling on the floor. First was Linnea's character's first attempt at infiltrating the porno ring and immediately breaking character and forgetting all about her undercover role. Second was the police academy graduation where apparently no one involved in the production of this film took the time to actually research a police academy graduation but instead put the actors in plain high school graduation gowns complete with cap & tassels. Nowhere on planet Earth do police academy graduates wear graduation gowns & caps! I always wet myself when that scene comes up!

You get comedy but you also get ridiculous dialogue, incomprehensible plot riddled with plot holes, elementary school play quality acting, amateurish camera work and editing, no knowledge of what the word continuity even means, 1st grade level sets & set designs, lines delivered the same way they'd read it straight off the page, bad overacting, T&A (for those so inclined), and so much worse. Normally these are things that would make me hate a movie but for this level of cheese & camp, I'm content with a final grade of -D (I liked it).

It didn't try to be anything more than what it was - pure cheesy, campy, brain dead, trashy goodness and on that point - it delivered.
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4/10
Purely enjoyable crap
BandSAboutMovies4 May 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Are you ready for the movie that won USA Networks' B-Movie Awards for Best Picture and has the honor of being their highest-rated late-night film when it first aired on cable television?

How about a Police Academy ripoff with Ginger Lynn and Linnea Quigley? Are you prepared for that?

What if I told you that Rick Sloane, the maker of Hobgoblins, was the creator?

Yeah, you'd watch that.

Holly Wells (Ginger Lynn, the one-time queen of VHS adult films) goes legit, teaming with scream queen Linnea Quigley, who plays Didi, to enter a vice school where cops learn how to bust adult movies and prostitution.

Tamara Clatterbuck, who is also in Hobgoblins and was a dominatrix in UHF, is Tinsel while Jean Carol is the evil Queen Bee. Karen Russell also shows up and you remember her from films like Hellbent, Phoenix the Warrior, Dr. Alien and Shock 'Em Dead.

Jayne Hamil also makes the first of her five appearances as vice academy teacher Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire. And hey! The actress using the name Christian Barr who plays Cherry Pop is actually Allison Barron, who we all know as Helen from Night of the Demons.

Ginger Lynn isn't the only adult star in this. The late Viper, a former ballet dancer who eventually left the adult industry and became a phlebotomy technician is here too.

This is a movie so cheap that the girls all wore their own outfits and Ginger drives her own car in the opening. Are clothes are cars why you're watching this? I dare say no.
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5/10
A Crude, Low-Budget Comedy which Somehow Manages to Work
Uriah4326 March 2016
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.
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for better or worse (mostly worse) was a USA network Up-all-night staple
movieman_kev19 July 2004
Two borderline mentally retarded vice girls and an idiot man-child partner arrest whores in this inanely stupid "comedy" from the supremely untalented Rick Sloane. The fact that Linnea Quigley is in it makes it a tad less sucky, but not less sucky enough for the film to be watchable.For some reason I wonder what Christian Barr who plays Traci Lords.. um, I mean 'Cherry Pop' is up to nowadays though.

My Grade: D

Dvd Extras: Director's commentary; Interviews; Ginger Lynn Allen Filmography; and theatrical Trailer

Eye Candy: Ginger Lynn Allen as Holly, Linnea Quigley as Didi, and Karen Russell as Shawnee all show breasts
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1/10
Horrible garbage
jellopuke10 July 2021
Parts of this qualify as so-bad-its-good, but most is just painfully awful. The jokes are lame, there's not enough t & a, the acting is sub amateurish, the sets are just white rooms, and the entire premise is stupid. Yeah, it's trying to be Police Academy but it fails at pretty much everything it tries that it's a chore to sit through. I guess if you really like empty fields and the same warehouse room or street corner used over and over again you might dig it, but it's bottom of the barrel level trash that makes you dumber for having watched it.
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5/10
At least they had a good time making it
Groverdox19 January 2021
"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?
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3/10
Terrible
gridoon7 April 2007
Well at least the girls are cuties. And....that's about it, as far as the positive things that can be said about "Vice Academy" are concerned. The story is almost offensively stupid (come on, academy trainees sent out on their own to bust real criminals?), and most of the jokes are labored and unfunny. The humor is below-"Police Adademy", hit-to-the-groin level. This gives the impression that the film was aimed at kids, but it's too raunchy for kids; at the same time it's not raunchy enough for adults - there is maybe 1 minute of nudity in total. It's a film without an audience. In one of her first non-porn roles, Ginger Lynn Allen does show some charm, and should have had more screen time. (*)
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1/10
Dear god make it stop...
General_Changs_eyepatch11 September 2002
Somebody kill Rick Sloane. NOW.

Last year some friends and I, on a trip to Blockbuster looking for a good B-movie to laugh at, stumbled upon this steaming pile of excrement and rented it, completely unaware of the torture that lay in store for us. It looked inept enough from the cover to be amusing in an MST3K sort of way. But we were deceived. It's this B-movie junkie's personal Vietnam, or at least the Bay of Pigs. I don't drink, but good lord did I want to by the end of this turd. 80's hair, even worse 80's music, cringe-worthy dialogue and acting so bad it wraps around into the realm of anti-acting. This isn't funny awful. It's just awful, and almost as painful as Manos. Avoid at all costs.
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7/10
Good Fun
traciecavill17 February 2020
Let's face it - Vice Academy is about as dumb as movies get. It takes a little while to get used to its silly charms, but once you do, you just turn off your brain and go along for the ride. Everyone seems to be having such a good time and attacking the material with such sincere enthusiasm that it somehow transcends good movie or bad movie categorization. How can you say a movie is bad when everyone seems to be having such a good time that it, in turn, makes you have a good time as well?

The story is basically a mash up of Police Academy and Angel with attractive vice squad students being forced to pose as hookers and adult stars to capture drug dealers, underage graphers, and horny johns. There's your usual in-fighting between two of the girls played by scream queen Linnea Quigley and ex-adult star Ginger Lynn to see who can be the teacher's pet and nab the most scum from the street.

This used to get a lot of air time on USA's Up All Night in the 90's and it's easy to see why. This is the kind of cheesy and playfully sleazy movie they always loved to play. If you're a fan of these kinds of movies, you'll probably enjoy a lot of the movie. Sure, there are times when the pacing takes a holiday, but they always end up winning you back with a fun banter session or a somewhat funny set piece or two.
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8/10
An enjoyably inane 80's comedy hoot
Woodyanders14 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Various cadets train at an academy in order to join the Hollywood vice squad. The feisty Didi (the ever-adorable Linnea Quigley in fine spirited form), the ditsy Shawnee (foxy brunette knockout Karen Russell), and lunk-headed Dwayne (amiable Ken Abraham) not only infiltrate a seedy porno operation, but also a notorious prostitution ring as well. While Rick Sloane's flat direction and witless no-brainer script are anything but subtle or sophisticated, this film nonetheless possesses a certain endearingly clunky cheesiness that's impossible to dislike. The broad send-up of hardcore film-making is crudely amusing; ditto the often repeated knee-to-the-groin gag. Moreover, the cast play their silly parts with gleeful aplomb: Quigley, Russell, and Abraham make for likable leads, Ginger Lynn Allen portrays the spoiled, stuck-up Holly Wells with deliciously bitchy flair to spare, plus are are nifty supporting turns by Jayne Hamil as strict instructor Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire, Stephen Steward as hunky porn stud Chucky Long, Jean Carol as over-the-top evil flesh peddler Queen Bee, Stephanie Bishop as demanding lady porno director Desiree, Christian Barr as forlorn former porn starlet Cherry Pop, Tamara Clatterbuck as snarly streetwalker Sparkle, Jo Steele as brassy hooker Sparkle, and Manny Serrano as scummy drug dealer Snake. Stephen Ashley Blake's plain cinematography is merely acceptable. However, both Alan Der Marderosian's bouncy, throbbing score and the cool rockin' soundtrack hit the bull's eye (the gnarly theme song in particular totally smokes). As a nice added bonus, both Linnea Quigley and Karen Russell bare their beautiful breasts. A real riot.
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7/10
So. Fricking. Bad. BUT I LOVE IT.
teafortyler199526 September 2023
Logic? None. Plot? Threadbare. Acting? Bahahahahaha. But cheesy/comedic gold in the form on bad acting and one-liners? Yes queen. Linnea and Ginger give us the goods in their sassy characters. The words legendary, uninhibited and iconic come to mind. The costumes and the sets are so fun.

I can't preach about Linnea enough, personally. She delivers her lines with the tone inflections of a saltine cracker, but her personality is so darn good that it doesn't even matter. The charisma, uniqueness, nerve and *wink* talents make this movie worth it. It's not good but it's fun. And that's enough for me.

Good lord, I hate how much I love the first two Vice Academy movies.
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This movie has made my life worth living.
Rev.Phil20 December 1998
This is the greatest straight-to-video movie ever made. The whole series is great! So bad that it's good...The corny script, the bad acting...Rick Sloane delivers all the crap in a talented way that I'm sure no one could reproduce.It all makes me so giddy...I'm even in the fan club. God, I love this movie.
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7/10
Entertaining
bitbucketchip17 October 2022
An all female class of academy cadets - with one male classmate thrown in exclusively for groin smack jokes - need to make ten arrests each to graduate. With graduation day fast approaching our heroes go undercover...

Who am I kidding. There is no plot beyond scenarios crafted to get the tops off the attractive female cast members. Interspersed with the topless scenes are overly elaborate setups for various gags, some of which work and some of which don't. This is a parody of Police Academy, itself a parody of the action hero cop shows of the day. As a parody of a parody, it works.

I'm not familiar with the cast members, but apparently one appeared in x-rated movies and another was famous for being a scream queen in horror movies. Not that any of that matters. Everyone was endearing in their performances, which were delightfully overplayed for humor. The classroom instructor was particularly funny.

There isn't a lot of nudity, so I wouldn't recommend it if that's what you're looking for. But if you want a light hearted seventies type comedy with a handful of genuine laughs, this fits the bill.

Seven stars.
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Funny
zmoviefan31 January 2006
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.
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Horrible rip-off of Police Academy.
BlackJack_B19 February 2002
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.
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Where old porn stars go to die
klypz2 June 1999
Maybe the most ridiculous movie I've ever been privy to. I admit, I have a weakness for movies with 'Academy' in the title; Combat Academy is a particular favourite. This, however, takes the proverbial cake. It's surreal: the acting(atrocious), the dialogue(and lack thereof), the plot(a porn movie) and cheap production values that would have Johnny LaRue turning in his grave. Basically it's 90 minutes of attractive ladies running around a city trying to arrest hookers, drug dealers and porn stars. Porn queen Ginger Lynn Allen's talent(as minute as they might be) are totally wasted. It's Police Academy minus Steve Guttenberg and a budget multiplied by poor actresses who'd do anything to take their clothes off to make money. My only hope is that no one made anything above scale for this flick... the actresses should have paid the producer to be in it. If you're looking for some excellent vapid entertainment, nice shots of bosom and some laughs, rent it. If you want anything else, I'd look elsewhere.
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My comments will be short and sweet.
spectre-323 October 1998
IT'S STUPID! IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE!
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Meek attempt at "service" sex comedy
lor_2 April 2023
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.
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