Lost and Found: The Vice Academy Movies

I’ve mentioned my gloriously misspent early ‘90s youth watching B-movies and cult horror plenty of times. Many of those movies I viewed for the first time thanks to USA Up All Night and the hostess with the mostess, Rhonda Shear. Before I go on, look, you’re aware of my feelings for Rhonda. They’re well documented. Rhonda is an eternal crush and just the mere thought of her circa 1989–1996ish is enough to make me woozy again, just like when I was 15 years old.

But I digress.*

Every Friday and Saturday night, Rhonda and the dearly departed Gilbert Gottfried, respectively, hosted one cinematic exploitation classic after another. From slashers to toxic waste monsters to sleazy thrillers, Up All Night was the place to be back then if you wanted to learn about the world of exploitation cinema. There was also stuff like the direct-to-video Vice Academy movies. They debuted on Up All Night and ran on the network all through the decade. The first feature was USA’s highest rated late-night film. The films will forever be linked to the nineties glory days of Rhonda Shear and Up All Night.

The series is kind of hard to classify, but it’s definitely as B as B-movies get. Sure, they spoof stuff like Charlie’s Angels and Police Academy, but do they work as comedies? Barely, because the humor is pretty weak. How about erotic thrillers? Not really. Softcore exploitation? Pretty much, except when you get down to it there isn’t much nudity or sex in these films; it’s more about the allusion of adult film stylings.

Speaking of adult film stylings, Ginger Lynn Allen starred in the first three Vice Academy movies as the uptight, careerist, undercover vice detective Holly Wells. Unbeknownest to my sheltered teenage self, Ginger had previously been an adult film star before the Vice Academy movies. In doing some research on Ginger for this post—not that kind of research!—I discovered this long and informative interview, which is full of bon mots about her various careers. Check out this one:

I’ve never done a scene where there’s a pizza delivery boy in it. Ever… [laughs] Although speaking of a pizza delivery boy. I’ve been doing radio for about twelve years now. On the very first radio show I called up and ordered a pizza. The delivery guy got there and I told him, “I don’t have any money, can I give you a blowjob for pizza?” I did and he did. [laughs]

To quote the stunned interviewer, “that’s a hell of a story.” [emphasis added]

While no pizza delivery boys are involved, Vice Academy 2 does begin with a special, sexy message from Ginger. Talking directly into the camera as herself, she promises more sizzle and sex than in the first movie. While she does spend much of the film in lingerie, or going topless at one point, it’s still a pretty tame movie, like many of the entries in the series. They hinted at a lot of things without actually showing much. These are very silly films, and that silliness undercuts any attempts at titillation. The real sex appeal in them is in the uber-nineties outfits Ginger and her costars squeeze into while they bumble their way through undercover vice squad work. Absurdly skin-tight tube dresses and the micro-est of micro-miniskirts were the fashion of the day, and the of Vice Academy stars rock the hell out of this look.

Basically, the Vice Academy movies were pretty low-rent affairs with jokes that fell flat more often than not, but starred women who were anything but flat. Scream queen Linnea Quigley costarred in the first two alongside Ginger, playing fellow vice babe Didi, who isn’t shy about regularly stripping down to her thong or going undercover to bring down an illegal porn ring in the first film. In the second, she is tied up and forced to ingest a drug that should kill her, but instead, and because of her raging libido, it just brings her to a lengthy and hilariously ecstatic orgasm. These are great Linnea performances that stand alongside her work in The Return of the Living Dead, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Night of the Demons, and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers as perfect examples of why she is a cult movie legend.

So, what have we learned here? The Vice Academy movies are juvenile, gratuitous, and at times embarassingly bad. In other words, they were the perfect USA Up All Night movies! Back then, I had a blast watching them late night and into the wee hours of the morning. Not only that, but they taught viewers some very important lessons about vice work.

1. Always dress for the job you want.

2. Lead with your strengths during job interviews.

3. See #1.

4. Prove to your employer you’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done.

5. See #1.

6. Hair and makeup are essential to good undercover vice work.

7. See #1.

---

All six Vice Academy movies are currently streaming for free on Tubi, so have at ‘em.

---

*One more Rhonda digression before I go. From Rhonda’s official YouTube channel, this video collects all of the interstitial clips from the 1992 USA Up All Night marathon of Vice Academy and Vice Academy 2. Linnea Quigley and Jayne Hamil from the Vice films, plus Jewel Shepard from Return of the Living Dead, join Rhonda on set before and after commercial breaks for a slumber party. They compete in a grueling game of Twister—in which Linnea shows off the impressive flexibility that helped make her 1990 spoof Horror Workout a fan favorite—and other events in the “Rhonda Olympics.” This is the sort of stuff we rotted our brains on before the internet. I watched this episode live as it aired in ‘92. I’m very proud of that. Where were you??