VICE ACADEMY 3 (1992), VICE ACADEMY 4 (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor* 
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

Some 'net reviewer claimed that VICE 3 had the highest budget of the six flicks in the series, but they must have spent it on costumes, since they certainly didn't use any of the money on writers.

In my review of the second movie I remarked that the producers had pruned the main characters down to just a Nice Girl and a Nasty Girl, while making both of them egregiously dumb. Holly (Ginger Lynn Allen) is still the Nasty One, trying to escape having been sent to prison to "work undercover" from the second film. Nice Girl Didi took a hike, but her sister Candy (Elizabeth Kaitan) has replaced Didi as a vice cop, apparently having graduated from the no-longer-seen "vice academy" run by the sour Miss Devonshire (played for this one film by Jordana Capra). Yet Candy isn't really all that nice-- she and Holly constantly exchange barbs and undercut one another-- but a "Nicer Girl" is also introduced, a female convict named Samantha (a strangely unbilled Darcy DeMoss). Samantha has apparently taken a correspondence course to become a vice cop once she's released from prison, but she barely interacts with the other two girl cops, mostly bouncing off Miss Devonshire and the Commissioner.

The not-very-super villain this time is a convict named Melanie (Julia Parton, cousin of the more famous Dolly), who during her escape gets her hair turned green by toxic fumes, so that she renames herself "Malanthion" (after the insecticide). This was almost certainly a petty swipe from the origin of Batman's foe The Joker, and her one schtick-- stealing women's purses after making their hair frizzy with a special hairspray-- reminds me of a similar Joker-schtick from the 1989 BATMAN. Once again the entire police force is helpless against this low-wattage thread, and so the three newbie vice cops set a trap to catch the green-haired petty crook. It's almost a given that the jokes fall flat, but at least none of the women do.

VICE ACADEMY 4 reverts back to the "nice and nasty" combo that then lasts for the remainder of the series, but both the character of Holly and the actress Ginger Lynn Allen go bye-bye. Candy is still around, being played by Elizabeth Kaitan, and she's more or less still Nice. But now Samantha, graduated from both prison and the vice academy program, is played by one Rocki Garner, is no longer the goody-good from Part 3. She's not as bitchy as Traci, the character who assumes the Nasty Girl role in installments 5 and 6. But in one of Samantha's few attempts to enact any duties close to those of real vice cops-- that of pretending to be a hooker-- Samantha rages at a potential customer who says he'd rather spend his money on a video game rather than someone so "trashy." For some reason, I found that Garner made a better foil to Kaitan than any of the other pairings. if only because Garner is taller than the average girl. The actress's height lends some credibility to a scene in which the usually incompetent vice-duo manage to beat up a male perp between them.

And what's the lame menace this time? Well, it's the crazed Malanthion again (Julia Parton), and her plans for revenge are once again pretty picayune. like attacking the vice cops, including Miss Devonshire (once more played by Jayne Hamil). However, she briefly gets something like real super-powers. She's being routinely tortured with electroshock in the local prison-- possibly a joke spun off from "serious" WIP films-- but Malanthion survives the shock and escapes. Later, she's seen at a club, where she tosses around a couple of male bouncers-- apparently with super-strength, though this power never shows up again.

Now, from that basic description, Number Four sounds as stupid as all the others. Well, it is-- but more of the jokes work on their own terms than in any of the other entries. Some include:

*After Miss Devonshire gets the dimbulb Commissioner to propose marriage, Candy offers to help find the "best man." When Devonshire claims she doesn't think Candy could find the best man, Candy claims she was once at a nude beach, where it was easy to find the "best man."

*The girls attempt to order a stripper for Devonshire's hen party, and instead of getting a male performer named Mister Centaur, they get Miss Century, the only hundred-year-old female stripper.

*Devonshire says she wants to wear wedding clothes appropriate to someone from the sixties, and Samantha mishears it as "someone in her sixties."

*Candy's suggestion for a honeymoon site: "There's Tijuana; I've heard about this donkey show--"

It all wraps up with Malanthion trying to crash Devonshire's wedding, and a swipe from the 1966 "Batman" theme song, though as usual the end "fight" is barely worthy of that name.