3/14/08: Vice Academy 3 (1991)The
Vice Academy series achieved its fame through frequent showings on the USA Network’s old
Up All Night film package. The first in the series almost got a real push as a theatrical release.
Vice Academy was developed on the Paramount lot, and the studio connection even led to Leonard Maltin giving it a fairly decent review on
Entertainment Tonight. Another major studio gave us
Mortuary Academy that same year. Those were crazy times.
Anyway, the first two
Vice Academy films established low-budget horror icon Linnea Quigley and former (and future) porn star Ginger Lynn Allen as slutty aspiring vice cops in a
Police Academy rip-off. The series was overseen by writer/director Rick Sloane, and he got the most out of his micro-budgets with plenty of first-and-only takes. The entire six-film series is notable for sporting the production values of porn films. Ginger Lynn Allen deserved better. She was doing some fine mainstream work for a while.
Vice Academy 3 saw the departure of Quigley from the series. We also lost the fabulous Jayne Hamil paying tribute to Eve Arden as the strict Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire. She’d return for the last three films, but Johanna Grika does an excellent job of covering the role. Ginger Lynn Allen was back as Officer Holly Wells. We last saw her character in jail, but it turns out that was an undercover assignment. The series never could decide if Holly was a hero or villain. That’s part of the charm. It’s also a reason that
Vice Academy 3 sneaks up on being fun schlock with a conservative message.
The movie starts as a standard franchise entry. We meet Elizabeth Kaitan as new Vice Academy recruit Candy, who gives us our first nude scene at the 12-minute mark. She stumbles upon escaped felon Melanie (played by former and future porn star Julia Parton), and chases the bad gal into a toxic cloud of insect spray. Melanie comes out the other end with green hair and quoting Jack Nicholson in
Batman.
It takes us a while to understand that there’s an environmental message here. We’re distracted by uniquely
Vice Academy moments such as a Field Day at the local women’s prison, with the big prize being a work furlough spent at—of course—the Vice Academy. Meanwhile, Melanie has changed her name to Malathion as part of her mutant crime spree. She starts by robbing women that she terrorizes with a can of hairspray. “She threatened the community,” says one victim, “and the environment!”
Malathion’s next target is the local recycling center. The idiotic Commissioner decides that the best way to find Malathion is to host an Earth Day celebration, with a raffle for a huge pile of money. This is 1991, so he just can’t come up with a carbon-neutral scam. Instead, he giddily announces that he’ll be cashing in the paychecks of everybody at the Vice Academy. Miss Devonshire is given the task of making the public announcement—although she’s sadly cut off while veering into more of her favorite subjects: “Corporal punishment, the death penalty, interrogation techniques…”
Earth Day comes, and Miss Devonshire sizes up the crowd: “This is the most disgusting group of people I have ever seen.” The attendees all have to bring something recyclable, and a hippie couple makes an unusual contribution. “We don’t burn our bras anymore,” explains the woman. “We make them into quilts.”
At the other end of the spectrum, an oblivious Yuppie couple treats the Commissioner like a valet: “Our Beemer’s the red one. Make sure you have our smog device checked.”
Holly shows up in a fur coat, and she looks great. The hippies are scarfing down the free food while the Yuppies sneer that they only eat vegerarian fare. They don’t realize they’re eating pigs’ feet. Holly and Candy are put in aluminum bikinis so they can go undercover in recycling bins. Malathion finally shows up, and horrifies the crowd with her mere presence. As the Yuppie woman shrieks, “This woman here is smoking cigarettes, using hairspray, and she’s drinking out of a Styrofoam cup!”
The trap works, and everybody gets to help save the day. That includes Miss Devonshire in an unusually proactive role that lets her dress up in exterminator gear. This leads the Commissioner to make a big pronouncement: “We cleaned up the city! Once again, we’ll have clean air to breathe, and clean water to drink, and a clean recycling center—“
Holly interrupts: “And, most importantly, our paycheck money is safe and sound.”
A lot of us can’t say the same as Earth Day takes over the world. Good to see that Holly has her priorities straight. And that’s pretty much the end of the film, except for a subplot that has to be resolved. That goes on a little too long. Don't complain, though, since the entire
Vice Academy series would come to an end by 1998.
Make it your own: You can get a cheap DVD of
Vice Academy 3, but it’s a better deal to buy the DVD box set of
the first three films. They include informative commentary tracks by Rick Sloane. Then you should get
the other box set of the next three films, so you can see what became of Malathion. You won’t get any more Ginger Lynn Allen, though.
* See also: Night Patrol
(1984)
