Vice Academy Double Trouble

I recently acquired copies of not only one but two movies featuring the word ‘Vice’ and starring Linnea Quigley. My husband has been going on about the Vice academy movies since we first started seeing each other over a decade ago. I can just imagine him as a kid, having to either stay up way past his bed time to watch these movies on low volume in his bedroom or somehow convince his parent that they were only basic cop movies and dupe them into hiring it out for him, either way it was naughty and he always maintained positive feelings for these films. 

In truth though, the main reason he likes these films is because they are goofy, so very very goofy. Due in large part to Linnea Quigley (and almost every other person in the movie) she has a delightful habit of being the most over the top character in the film, overstating her lines and just not taking any scene very seriously, she is also very funny and there is something so sexy about a woman who can make fun of herself. These movies also features former adult film star Ginger Lynn Allen (you may also recognize her from the music video for “Turn The Page” by Metallica) I suspect this may have also been a factor. 

I definitely wanted to watch 1 and 2 as a double and rather than writing a review for both of them and risk them being too similar I’m going to review them as a double and compare how similar they actually are.

So onto the show. 

Vice Academy:

·         Directed By: Rick Sloane

·         Year released: 1989

·         Starring: Linnea Quigley, Ginger Lynn and Jane Hamil

·         Condition of video: good

Vice Academy Part 2

·         Directed By: Rick Sloane

·         Year released: 1990

·         Starring: Linnea Quigley, Ginger Lynn and Jane Hamil

·         Condition of video: good

Trailers:

Mission Of The Shark: this movie is awesome. The first thing you see in the trailer is Carey Hiroyuki Tagawa’s face, then Stacey Keach, then Vaughn Amstrong and then HOLY SHIT SHARKS! Something about a military cover up but I was already sold on the cast.

Rock N Roll High school Forever:  with Corey Feldman. Not much to the trailer but somehow this movie looks lame and amazing at the same time.

Total Exposure: This trailer is basically a Sports Illustrated spread circa 1993 with Kenickie from Grease. Basically consisting of cocaine and boobs, people playing dangerous games with each other, The guy from Flash Dance and sudden butt, The staples of any true 90s semi erotic thriller.

Judgement:  some kind of “sexy judge” who plays by her own rules in a corrupt system. She has compassion but she has to work within the law, or something. She’s a terrible actress ( especially acting beside Karen Black) The tape started going weird during the trailer so I’m guessing either someone got so fed up with how stupid the premise for this movie is or they kept rewinding it to see more law boobies

The Game: Another deadly game, this time hunting people. “ John Cain” is kicking some ass “ killing is hell, that’s how he likes it” awesome.

Then there was some boring PSA about the ‘M” rating which was so 90s it was cringe worthy. I’m glad that I no longer have to listen to Bill Collins talk about “sexual stimulations”.

I’m going to delve into the obvious and start with the beginning, of both films.  Both the films start with the same theme song, it’s a punky song with heavy guitar and a jazzy energy that makes you want to bop, at first I thought he was singing “I’ve got a pickle in my pocket” but I didn’t think that made that much sense, I then realised that he was actually saying “I’ve got a pistol in my pocket” which is much better considering they are cops. The first film begins with the most awkward and absurd conversation I have ever heard and the second isn’t much better but then Quigley walks in and she is a total bad ass. She just doesn’t give a shit and Ginger Lynn is such a square. 

The line delivery is pretty terrible, especially from the lecturer Miss Devonshire, who is over the top but not in a good way. Linnea and Ginger do well in both films but the acting and line delivery is much better in the second film. Both films have the same themes and loosely similar stories. The first film features a group of attractive women (and one man who attempts to get his head into boobs as much as possible) and the second features the two graduates as part of the police force. The themes are as follows:

1.     

              Hahahah men are stupid: in the first film the only man in the class decides to show off how sexist he is by openly admitting that he’s only there to take advantage of all the T&A, in response he is asked to be a part of a self-defense demonstration where all of the women in the class kick him in the balls. The second movie deals (in a very light way) with workplace sexual harassment and discrimination against women in the police force. The male police officers are stupid and useless cowards who keep fucking up and the main top dog makes a career out of having sex with everyone  and tries to get our two heroes fired because they won’t, he ends up in a very embarrassing situation. On the surface these films may seem sexist toward women and you might even criticize them for exploiting women but take it from me, the women are the capable, intelligent and resourceful ones in this movie who own their sexuality and use it to manipulate men who underestimate them. Like an Andy Sidaris film.

2.       

      The bad guys are really bad: The first film deals with trying to bust a pornography organization that has been abusing an underage girl by forcing her to perform in adult films and then proceed to beat her up when she doesn’t want to ( oh what fun!) and the second film deals with a (stupid) terrorist organization that poisons the water in a police station to extort money from them and also the before mentioned workplace sexual harassment. There is also a subtle theme about the extent of self-respect. Our two heroes are constantly battling against self-doubt amongst a crowd of women with very low self-esteem.  

These films both have moments that are just ridiculous, from Quigley being involved in the most hilariously dark porno ever featured in a comedy “ I’m going to rape you until you split in half” and  loving it, kidnapping the star and raping him herself, to trying to convince a woman wearing a bee hive wig and a bee sting on her butt to not sell them into white slavery, to being unapologetically racist and then finally determining that all police work simply consists of tricking people or getting your boobs out to distract them ( which is the best trick ever).

The main difference between the two films is that the subject matter in the first film is more fucked up but the sexual innuendo is quite subtle whereas in the second film the story is a little tamer but the sexuality has been amped up considerably. The first film ends with a really awkward silence and a lot of jumping and yelling incoherently which was thankfully absent in the second film. I am admittedly a little confused by the second film though, mostly because of their motives.

Were they actually going to have sex with someone so they didn’t get fired?

Did they actually create a robotic police officer named “bimbo cop” and think it was a great idea until the real police women sabotaged it to keep their own jobs?

I keep changing my mind about whether these are a comment against what they seem or they are just trying to be funny. The second film has some great lines though.

“my morals are as low as my IQ”

“you probably don’t even know how to shake your pelvis!” .

Sure things like the inclusion of a “worthless” switch on the bimbo bot and the idea that women have to compete against each other to win kinda makes you cringe but it’s a comedy! Laugh at it and laugh with Ginger and Linnea as they act like goofs and have an awesome time saving the day. Why take yourself seriously when you can just shake your pelvis instead.

An Almost Haunting At The Seacliff Inn

Tonight I was all settled down to watch an awesome tape I had in the closet called “True Blood” the front cover had a whole bunch of that floating head bullshit but it had Billy Drago, Jeff Fahey AND Sherilyn Fenn. There were car explosions everywhere and gang fights and glamour shots of Jeff Fahey and I was so damn excited to watch something kick ass after a couple of duds I’ve been subjected to lately. My husband put the tape in- it didn’t work, on closer inspection it appeared to be what experts call “completely fucked”. So I let out a great sigh and went with my second choice “The Haunting of Seacliff Inn” with Ally Sheedy.

My husband replied with “PG Tiff? Really?” he had already agreed to sit down and watch it with me so he was stuck at this point. The commentary was an accurate depiction of our enthusiasm and it didn’t stop there. 

The cover is actually pretty awesome and somewhat reminiscent of a Stephen King Novel with the jaws of an animal, a wolf presumably hovering ominously over a mansion in a dark setting.  The tag line reads “A new home, a new start but what secret terror lurks within?” well it can’t be much because as we scan our eyes to the bottom of the page it reads “PG for low level violence and sexual references” well if we can’t get some violence we might at least see some sexiness. I start to doubt this possibility as I stare at the back cover at an extreme close up of Ally Sheedy. 

The video is in very good condition which is what I expected from a tape that’s probably been watched a total of three or four times. The trailers start and my husband Jake started to groan, 

G rated: The little Rascals, “my hope of anything scary happening in the next one hundred minutes has just been smashed” –Jake.

G rated: Lassie, The dog who peed on our carpet and our hearts, “did Lassie ever do anything other than just bark?” apparently she jumped off roofs a lot. 

To the movie now, we start with pleasant music driving through the countryside; all this scene needs is Solsbury Hill and a touching story about reconnecting true love. I see the astonishingly terrible title come up and I want them to drive off the cliff immediately, thirty seconds into the film. This is beginning to feel like a daytime soap opera or TV movie from time-life, Touched by an Angel at Seacliff Inn.

The cast names are being displayed and suddenly Louis Fletcher comes up “its Kai Winn! I can’t get away from her!” background: we are currently going through all of Deep Space Nine again and we HATE Kai Winn; we stick our middle finger up at the screen every time we see her. I automatically don’t trust this character and I haven’t even seen her. Ally Sheedy looks and acts like a flake throughout this entire film. She and Her husband have uprooted their lives to make a new start and sav their marriage (Solsbury Hill starts playing in my head again). They are all set to purchase an estate to fix up as a hotel and she suddenly sees another one across the other side of the beach, tells the real-estate agent who has been working her butt off to broker this deal that she doesn’t fucking want it anymore and proceeds to invite herself into this occupied home because she wants it more. 

Sheedy is a crazy bitch. 

The old lady straight up tells them that the house isn’t for sale but Susan (Sheedy) still obsesses over it like it’s just a matter of time before she can hustle this poor old lady out of her home. At this stage I’m thinking to myself that they are obviously contemplating offing the old bint. She keeps repeating that the house called to her, not a very rational business plan. Her husband is acting like he thinks it’s cute that she’s lost her god damn mind. They start talking about how important it is that they commit to what they are doing, the important thing is not that they need to commit it’s that the house isn’t for fucking sale. 

The old lady walks through her house and a radio starts playing by itself “oooh boogie boogie”. The first “scary” scene in this movie consists of an old lady investigating random music the second is how Susan thinks it’s totally okay to just help herself into the house the next day presumably to say “please let me take your house lady “ and finds blood everywhere. I feel like they may have used up their entire PG violence quota, it’s all flying curtains and shadows from here.

“They’ll need to sell the house now, oh how convenient, suspects no one”. Susan changes her mind about the house and they leave.

Not wanting to look like the cold hearted bitch she really is they wait two months before actually purchasing the house, presumably after the smell of dead old lady is gone. I would have had a nervous breakdown being married to this irrational and impulsive woman. The first jump scare in the film is brought to us by a wine bottle cork going off, they laugh and clink their glasses together “thankyou Lorraine for dying, you’re a champ”.

Susan acts like a flake for another ten minutes or so, waking down the beach so she can see something that no one else will believe. So far this movie has displayed all the horror movie clichés in the first half of the film but in an extremely PG way, like a Mormon at a campfire.  Cue the fearsome animal spirit that will stalk her rest of the film. A dog, an incredibly adorable and non-threatening floof who if it were me I would be scratching his belly and letting him know that he is a good boy. 

Kai Winn finally introduces herself and is all friendly and neighbourly, I don’t buy it and the married couple finally spends their first night in the house together and have the most unrealistically rigid conversation “do you miss your high powered job honey” and then they have floor sex. Susan feels something in the house like a butt naked paranormal investigator “its cold in here” yeah no shit.

The most hilarious thing about this movie is that Sheedy keeps looking at the camera and I don’t think it’s intentional. The fire goes out suddenly and the husband blames it on a draft or something , he’s going to be frustratingly sceptical “ oh it’s okay honey that wasn’t a ghost that was just a bunch of sheets and the wind being moved by two broom sticks and a rubber band, no biggy”.

They find a secret room and talk about a fire and something about the entire plot of the film but I wasn’t listening. Susan was in the attic waiting for something mildly inconvenient to happen and she found a music box with a ballerina inside that looks like a female version of Channing Tatum and an electrician gets electrocuted because the ghost switches the metre box back on because he’s a dick. If my play by play seems disjointed it’s because this movie is disjointed. 

Susan is touching herself in the attic (as you do) and is startled by the sound of electrocution. The tradesman is alive ( fucking PG films) he explains that his watch was miraculously set back six hours, like that matters somehow but I can understand the annoyance of lost time. The married couple have a fight because she thinks something weird is going on but he’s pissed off because she dragged him all the way out here and now she’s talking about ghosts, I can totally see where he’s coming from but he’s being a prick. He seems to only be nice to hear when he wants some floor sex. 

On the beach of plot fulfillment Mark meets another female character who basically says “please use my body to make you feel young again” with her body language. He decides to make love to his wife with a sound that can only be described by someone slowly punching jelly (the kissing, don’t be gross). After the love is done he immediately berates her for believing in ghosts and just being plain old silly. We find out that he had an affair and that’s why they are doing all of this, to save their marriage “totally called it, what a scumbag”. Adultery bait invites her in to live at their bed and breakfast surprising no one. Mark needs to go into her room to “ fix the pipes” and she’s all like “ oh look I’m naked , how careless of me to be naked around you, please let me sit on the bed and let you talk about pipe, let me seduce you with my PG sensuality” . 

The floof invites itself into the house and attempts to mess with them but just ends up looking adorable again. Trying to look all nasty, Floof attack! Nothing happens. Susan does some investigating on the house, probably to take her mind of her crappy life, she finds the tombstone belonging to the original owner of the house (obviously the spirit, I mean duh) and the camera pans to a tombstone that says Sarah “dun dun Duuunnnnnn”.  Mark is taking pictures of Sarah because he has no will power, she gets naked. Don’t do it asshole. He kisses her and then says “I can’t do this I love my wife” too late idiot. 

They have a talk at a bar and he sees a picture of a black dog that suspiciously looks like floof but stills maintains a stern level of scepticism and sarcasm toward anything Susan says. He is literally the most unsupportive person I have ever seen in a film and yet still somehow finds a way to guide us into the third damn sex scene in the film, obviously thinking about Sarah, and sees her face.  Am I supposed to like this guy? He even leads the other lady to commit suicide. She was a ghost anyway, or something I stopped paying attention. An unnecessary dog death completes the horror movie cliché and the marital tension comes to a head. 

Can I just take a moment to say that this is the most un haunty movie of haunt movies. It is so thoroughly un haunty that I would call it a drama with vague allusions of creepiness, kind of. 

The haunting finally happens and whispers to her and takes her ring off, this spirit might actually be the most irritating I have ever seen. His big trick is that he turns the taps on and floods the house, making sure that Mark blames Susan and causes him to throw his hands up in the air and give up on the whole thing. By this stage I have started drawing little ducks all of my page, not noticing that the entire plot is revealed in the next five minutes with a paranormal picture, the reveal that Susan is a doppelganger of the original owners wife who he was obsessed with and a letter explaining everything you need to know to get back on track.

Susan is in a trance about to get ghost raped in a dead ladies dress, the ghost literally dances with her for like two seconds and then tries to undress her, he doesn’t fuck around. Kai Winn decides tap into her psychic ability to save the day and is taken out by backseat floof and Mark finally suspends his disbelief to come save his wife from a very awkward fate. He proves to be fairly useless though and in the, dare I say, only creepy scene in the film two ghosts are set alight and are screaming backwards while writhing around holding each other. 

This brings us to the end of the film where Kai Winn is alive (fucking PG films, she drove off a damn cliff!) and the two main characters decide to carry on with their marriage even though it’s a fucking joke. The “ghosts” were as malicious as a couple of house rats making a nuisance of themselves and were gone before they could even be even slightly creepy.

So it’s finally over and Jake is looking at me with this face that says “ why in the hell did you put me through that” some VHS aren’t  even so bad they’re good, some things are so bad you just want to put them in the Seacliff bin.

Carradine and his Night Children

Happy New year everyone! I know that the predictable thing to do at this point would be to review a movie based on new years eve or Christmas or something but I don’t want to start my year off safe , I want to start my year out on the streets and I can't think of anyone better to be stuck out on the streets with than David Carradine and his Night Children. 

Night Children is a movie that I have been meaning to watch for a while now, It’s been in my vhs collection for an absurd amount of time without being touched. It has David Carradine in it, It’s rated R for frequent violence and it is supposedly filled with a whole bunch of “hard hitting action. Presented in a clam shell box, which happens to be my favourite cover format, the quality of the tape is quite good. However, the cover art leaves a lot ot be desired, with an odd looking compostion of floating heads and a tag line “ the Streets their kingdom, violence their law”, the back cover features out of focus action stills of the characters halfway through a movement, I guaranetee you there were literally hundreds more images they could have used to better sell this cover.

There were only two trailers on this video, which is strange for an ex rental.

Mystic Pizza: Vince D’Onofrio, Julia Roberts and everyone else in Hollywood circa 1988. We all know this movie as a romantic comedy that taught us  “ when life gives you anchovies, make pizza”.

Lady in White: actually a fantastic movie but not such a fantastic trailer. Literally gives away the ENTIRE FILM in complete chronological order.  Don’t watch this trailer if you haven’t seen the movie. 

In saying that though don't read my review of Night Children If you don't want to know what happens in the film, I get pretty in depth with my VHS reviews. 

·         Night Children, 1989

·         Duration: 83 minutes

·         Directed by: Norbert Meisel

·         Rated R for frequent violence and drug use.

The  film opens with a panning shot of the streets of L.A ( presumably) and heavy metal music. You have David Carradine in big letters and Night Children straight after, oh we know what we are in for. We’re on the streets during the day and we are following two cops chasing a mullet. Carradine is no fool, he knows what the deal is and his facial expressions are relaying a big “ this is so go damn tedious” vibe the whole time, he finds this “trying to get away” business quite humorous. They get to a house with two female family members ( or girlfriends, I never really figured that out) who are wearing the most awful lingerie I have ever seen and are trying ( terribly) to hide the persued under the sheets of their bed. 

We are introduced to Carradine’s partner who exclaims that they have “ six inches on that kid” and that he is so hungry he could eat a yak. They continue being weird and not taking their job very seriously by trying to break up a domestic dispute with a husband who beats on his wife and then everything turns into a goofy slapstick comedy moment and I’m totally lost. So far I get the felling that Carradine’s character cares very little about anything and his partner is going to totally die and change all that. Another set of credits roll, maybe we’ll get some plot once they get this over with. 

Punks! Finally we have met our antagonist. We have the usual suspects,a rogues gallery of cliche 80s punk coke heads and one out of place nerdy chic who is definitely going to have the worst possible thing done to her. They assert their dominance over the street by bullying an old lady and the nerdy chick helps her up and the camera stays on the old lady for long enough for it to be the saddest damn thing you have ever seen. This movie has a bad habit of lingering too long on shots, for an 83 minute film they seemed to use a lot of filler. The punks do more useless and stupid things and then we are introduced to the female protagonist of film Diane, who I am not afraid to say looks exactly like a female version of Henry Silva, it could be because she always looks so damn unimpressed ( I like both Nancy Kwan and Henry Silva a lot so I don’t think that is an unfair comparison) . After noticing this I couldn’t un-see it and I was waiting the whole time for her to have a freak out, Silva style.

Carradine and Silva are lovers, they have a petty argument about social justice and the subtext of the film is revealed. We jumped again to the punks fucking with a couple of yuppies on the street and assaulting them for no reason, sudden boobs follow. Nerdy chick surprises me with having some actual balls to say that she doesn’t like what they are doing, there is NOTHING more annoying than people being too “scared” to speak up against their friends when they do some fucked up shit. This movie is a little confusing in that the people dirft in and out of your favour very quickly. Carradine gains chase and what follows is a hilarious play by play of the dumbest chase scene in history.

·         Kid tries to intimidate Cop with a two by four

·         Carradine looks at him like a duck

·         Kicks kid into the wall

·         Foiled by garbage ( now he’s pissed)

·         Kids throw ( countless?) trash cans at cop

·         Kids jump to next building, try to coax innocent chick over

·         She falls and dies.

Now the cop is the bad guy ( controversial subtext!), Punks re group , take drugs and suddenly decide that they need money to buy guns so they can kill the cop. I’m getting dizzy.

There is a whole section of the film dedicated to trying to make you feel sympathy for these young douche bags and then ripping it away from you. The leader  loves the girl, doesn’t want her to sell her ass, then he gives her drugs. He explains how his childhood was traumatic and it was hard for him, then explains that he thinks that how his dad used to beat his mum was his dad showing that he cared. Diane, the social worker wants to butt into everyone’s lives and is determined to prove that she has balls of Silva. She lets herself into their hideout, totally cockblocks them and gets beaten for it. Top job there Henry. 

Carradine and Silva are in the most PG relationship I have ever seen in an r rated film. They are both wearing dressing gowns and walking around the apartment talking about their feelings. They almost have sex but then keep talking, I decided I didn’t want to see the sex so I’m letting this one slide.  The punks start doing really bad things, presumably becasuse they don’t have their straight edge chick to hold them back anymore. Blade ( the leader, such a lame name) kills some people and now the friends are predicatably scared of him and will do anything he says. 

They escape in a cop car and are surprised when old Maxy boy ( carradine) gives chase. Displaying an attitude of “ oh man this is such a drag” the whole time. The longest and most boring chase through a carpark follows, some punks get away and decide to break into someones home and fuck with the people living there. Nothing gets me in the mood for a little rape time like running from the cops, I find it amusing that the punks went from stupid drugged up kids to murderous psycopaths in the span of twenty minutes. The predictble happens and his partner dies, the events that follow can only be explained if you decide that after this event he completely lost all ability to reason.

Jenny the crack whore girlfriend of Blade is grazed by a bullet and decides to give up like a little sissy girl and sits down, Max sees her she turns around and he shoots her in the head, WHOOPS! She didn’t have a gun and in the ballsiest thing I have seen in this movie so far he contemplates planting one there. This is what I am looking for in my cop movies, some duality, some moral ambiguity about how life really is on the streets and what you have to do to keep yourself out there fighting the good fight  because you have convinced yourself it would be so much worse if you weren’t there.

The punks beat up on Diane but all that bleeds is her heart again and Max is getting tired of her shit. He’s playing by his own rules now and he knows his girlfriend wont forgive him for blowing that kid away. He goes after them by himself like a god damn vigilante,  gets caught and tied up and then

SPOILERS

He gets fucking shot in the head.

Wow, if they stick with that, that could be the boldest thing I have seen in a movie ever. Kill off the main character and let the audience realize it was Diane Silva all along that needed to resolve this. Maybe Max didn’t deserve to live because he never really cared anyway. He didn’t see them as human, he never saw the streets as being alive with anything but disease so it consumed him.

Diane finally decides to Silva it up and get all badass on these brats. She realizes in her infinite wisdom that there needs to be a balance between the hand that hits and the hand that holds to keep order in this crazy city. She visits the hospital….

COP OUT ENDING OF THE CENTURY.

Max is okay because somehow you can survive a bullet to the head at point blank range. I hate this, this movie lost all its balls, the balls were there swinging in the breeze like two proud medals of honor and then they were yanked off and put next to Max’s comfortable hospital bed in a glass of tonic water.

Fuck that ending. A final fuck you from a movie that never really decided what it wanted to be, a great movie that wanted to say something or an okay movie that just didn't really want to be driving around looking for bratty kids anyway.

Maybe Diane looking up at the sky means that she finally decided to leave his ass. You’ve done well Diane, you’ve done well.