When someone asks, “What was Julia Roberts’ first movie?” you can tell them it was as Babs in the 1987 sex comedy Firehouse, despite her not appearing in the credits. She’d have to wait until the next year and Satisfaction to see her name up on the screen.
This was made by J. Christian Ingvordsen, who would eventually go full auteur and write, direct and star in Blue Vengeance. Here, however, he’s made a film about some young ladies who have to deal with the seamier side of firefighting and convince the boys that they can make it.
Take it from someone who watched but this and Fireballs. They’re both horrible, but at least that one has some a talking bird and aggressively tries to be so bad. This one just…is.
Steve Guttenberg is gone, off filming Three Men and a Baby. That’s the cover story, because he not only turned down the lead role, he said no to all of the sequels that came after. Years later, he would say that he regretted this decision and has been trying to make a comeback for the series.
Sadly, the producers replaced him with Matt McCoy as Sergeant Nick Lassard, the grandson of series regular Commandant Eric Lassard (George Gaynes). Bobcat Goldthwait and Tim Kazukinsky also did not return.
The elder Lassard is a central character, as he’s due for mandatory retirement due to the machinations of the villainous Captain Thaddeus Harris (G. W. Bailey) and his henchman Lieutenant Carl Proctor ( Lance Kinsey). Can the boys in blue save their boss? Of course. Come on. This is Police Academy.
Before he retires, Lassard is chosen as Police Officer of the Decade and brings his favorite students, including Hightower (Bubba Smith), Jones (Michael Winslow), Tackleberry (David Graf), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook) and his newest graduate Officer Thomas “House” Conklin (Tab Thacker), along for a vacation to Miami Beach. Janet Jones — soon to be the wife of Wayne Gretsky — is also on hand as Officer Kate Stratton.
In between the many gags at the police convention, Lassard unwittingly takes a bag of stolen diamonds. The finale of the film, where Lassard has no idea that he’s part of a real hostage situation, is one of the funniest moments of the franchise.
I love that the Police Academy movies have great actors n them as the villains. This time, that would be Rene Auberjonois, who surely deserves better but is a game sport. In an interview, he would say, “Why I choose to do things is a mystery to me sometimes. I’ve done things that, on the face of it, you think, “Why would anybody do Police Academy 5?” I had to look at the role, and see if there’s a reason to do it. I did it because it was an opportunity to play a character that nobody else was ever going to let me play. I had a great time doing it, don’t regret it for a moment, and I’d do it again in a minute.”
As a side note, I’d like to call out that there was a Police Academy stunt show at Australia’s Warner Brothers Movie World which was was also one of the longest-running stunt shows in the world, with over 18,000 shows performed. The show also ran in their Germany location and if this website is any indication, the Madrid location still has this show running. Police Academy lives — even 26 years after the last film.
When Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was released, critic — and star of Myra Breckinridge — Rex Reed said, “If they make another Police Academy movie, I’ll leave the business.” Producer Paul Maslansky would say when this movie was released, “Reed’s one of the reasons I’m making Police Academy 5. I expect him to be a man of his word.” Sadly, Rex kept at it.
Penelope Spheeris made Wayne’s World, which is what so many know her for. Me, I remember when she made the three The Decline of Western Civilization movies. I would also like to forget that she made The Beverly Hillbillies and The Little Rascals.
She also made this movie about a vice squad that battles drug dealers and pornographers. In fact, three different teams of Hollywood Vice Squad officers work on three separate cases which include mob-run betting parlor, a bondage porn director and an old gangster who runs a teenage prostitution ring. Yes, there’s something here for the whole family.
Officers Chang (Evan C. Kim, Loo from The Kentucky Fried Movie) and Stevens (Joey Travolta) are two of the cops and their game is to act like Chang is a tourist. Things go too far when one of the girls ends up being a man with a knife, leading to a tense moment.
There’s also Officer Melton (Carris Fisher), who the boys — Jensen (Ronny Cox), Chavez and Miller — don’t trust to go after a BDSM director on her own.
Oh yeah — Pauline Stanton (Trish Van DeVere, the widow of George C. Scott) is looking for her daughter (Robin Wright), who has been kidnapped by James Walsh, owner of Pretty Girl Escorts. You know what I say: Never trust someone played by Frank Gorshin.
One of the other cops is played by Leon Isaac Kennedy, who was in all the Penitentiary movies as Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone. He should know something about vice, as he’s one of the first celebrities to have a sex tape leak, albeit one with his then-wife Jayne Kennedy.
Hard Boiled Haggerty is also in this, as he is in every movie that needed a bald henchman that Richard Moll had no interest in. He’s a former pro wrestler that shows up in more movies than you can imagine — everything from Paint Your Wagon to Earthquake, Deathsport and Rad.
Actually, I recognize so many people here. There’s Cec Verrell from Hell Comes to Frogtown. Beau Starr — yes, Sheriff Ben Meeker — is here. Julius Harris — Gravedigger from Darkman and Tee Hee Johnson from Live and Let Dieis about the place. And Sandra Crisp, who was also known as Goddess Bunny, a drag queen star who survived a horrifying foster family and polio.
Kenneth Peters also wrote Vice Squad. No relation and no Wings Hauser.
This movie is, charitably, a mess. Fisher realized that and used it as the inspiration for the movie within her book Postcards from the Edge. But hey — you may like it. Check it out on Amazon Prime or Tubi.
What does it get for me to watch a movie? Sometimes, it’s the idea that “Grandpa” Al Lewis (in his final movie), Corey Feldman and James Hong would somehow all be in a beach sex comedy about a bet between rival South Beach volleyball teams.
This is the one and done for director Joe Esposito, who is harkening back to the summer evenings when Hardbodies aired seemingly non-stop on Cinemax. Well, sir, I have seen Hardbodies 900 times. I am a friend of Hardbodies. South Beach Academy, you are no Hardbodies.
Elizabeth Kaitan, Robin from the seventh Friday the 13th and Candy in four of the six Vice Academy movies, is on hand. So is Julie Cialini, Playboy’s Miss February 1994 and 1995 Playmate of the Year.
If you watched USA Up All Night, good news. You’ve already seen this. For the rest of you that did normal things and slept and didn’t watch sex movies on basic cable, why are you reading this?
Wild Eye Releasing recently started their own Tubi channel and they’re now offering their previous DVD and VOD titles as free-with-ads streams. Surfing through their digital library has turned into quite the enjoyable retro-ride—one that takes me back to my 5 videos-5 bucks-5-days days when, at those prices, you’d gamble on anything and everything stocked on those VHS sci-fi and horror shelves. And lately, Wild Eye has been importing some pretty impressive foreign horrors—such as our recently reviewed Australian and Italian neo-giallos Dark Sister and Evil River—as well as this French-made horror.
The new U.S theatrical one-sheet
At first, since we’re dealing with a Euro-horror set piece that uses the admittedly overdone found footage narrative, I figured this micro-budgeted feature film debut from Fabien Delage would go back to the genre’s Ruggero Deodato roots and homage his found footage granddaddy, 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust. In that film, the footage is found and watched—and then a second crew goes out to find the people on the reels. And the story flips from a found footage to a traditional narrative. Rabid Bigfoots instead of cannibals, I assumed; a white inferno instead of a green one, if you will.
What we do get is, instead of an Italian homage, is an inversion of The Blair Witch Project meeting Neil Marshall’s The Descent (who recently gave us the very good Wales-shot supernatural-slasher Dark Signal) that’s seasoned with a soupcon Robert Rodriquez’s digitally-aged retro romp, Grindhouse. So, instead of witches, it’s Yetis (or werewolves or some type of hairy-humanoid) chasing our snowy campers.
The original, oh-so-’80s VHS retro Euro one-sheet
As with the recently (very good) reviewed Case 347 that dealt with found footage extraterrestrials, this is another case of “you just roll with it,” as it is explained the footage we’re about to watch was shot by two journalists (Melissa and David; an interviewer and camera man) who traveled to the French-Swiss border in January 1976 with the intention of shooting a documentary for French television. Those recordings were discovered 40 years later, in December 2016—and we’re watching the digitized and edited version of that 8 mm footage. (The retro Super 8 logos and ‘70s-style Motion Picture Rating Code title cards that open the film are a nice touch.) So, along with a med-tech/guide, a British biologist, and an American forensicist, the journalists are off to investigate what’s causing a series of cattle mutilations—and it turns into a search and rescue mission when they learn the scientific team they intended to meet in the mountains has gone missing.
Does this all work? Yes. Better than most micro-found footage romps? Oh, yeah. And even better than most of the Hollywood ones.
Personally, I’m not a fan of A-List directors and major studios jumping into the found footage and smartphone frays to capitalize on genres developed by indie-filmmakers out of financial necessity to tell stories against limited resources. I wasn’t a fan of the major record labels pillaging the ‘80s indie-rock scene to find instant “Nirvana”—so if I’m going to do a found footage romp, I’m rollin’ the streaming dice on the likes of For Jennifer and micro-indies like Case 347—and this indie-feature film debut by Fabien Delage.
It’s been 21 years since The Blair Witch Project re-ignited the found footage genre sparked by Ruggero Deodato—and we’re about five or six dozen films neck deep in the genre. Cold Ground is one of the better ones and worthy of your streaming excavation. It’s an effective calling card that proves Delage is adept at working a limited budget, develops smart characters, and builds suspense and dread with his scripts. And most importantly: he discovers skilled, professional actors who are willing to work below the going rates to trek through the ice and snow to tell his stories against their limited budgets.
So here’s to hoping a major European studio takes notice and gives Fabien Delage the budget and resources he deserves for this next movie. So check him out, won’t you? You can stream Cold Ground for free on Tubi and you can learn more about the Wild Eye catalog at their official website and Facebook pages. And if you’re a found footage fan, well, B&S About Movies is your one-stop shop. Just visit our homepage and enter “found footage” in the search box and search our stuffed digital VHS shelves.
About the Author: You can learn more about the work of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. As always: you know that has nothing to do with our feelings on the movie.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This review was originally posted on June 19, 2019, back when I was lost in the throes of trying to watch every single Linda Blair movie in the same week. It fits perfectly into this week of Police Academy films. Now, I have to watch the other two Jackie Kong movies that I am missing.
If you learn anything today, know that Linda Blair and Murray Langston, AKA The Unknown Comic, made two movies together: the romantic comedy Up Your Alley and this film, which takes Police Academy to an even filthier and more ridiculous level. Seriously: there’s no way this movie could have been made in 2019.
Jackie Kong directed four movies: The Being, The Underachievers, Blood Diner and this one, all with Bill Osco. Osco started his career producing adult films and would go on to star in The Being under the name Rexx Coltrane before starting to direct his own projects, starting with the comedy special The Unknown Comedy Show, a vehicle for Langston. Seeing as how two of his directing efforts are The Art of Nude Bowling and Cat Fight Wrestling, you’ll get an idea of where this film is heading.
Officer Melvin White (Langston) wants to be a stand-up comic, so to hide from his boss Captain Lewis (Billy Barty!), he becomes The Unknown Comic. At the very same time, a man with a paper bag over his head — and here I am assuming anyone in 2019 knows who The Unknown Comic is or what he looks like — is committing crimes.
Linda Blair comes in as Officer Sue Perman, who operates the switchboard for the police. Then there’s comedian and perennial Presidential candidate Pat Paulsen as Melvin’s partner, Officer Kent Lane. Pat Morita also shows up as a sexual assault victim and there’s an ongoing joke with Sydney Lassick (Charlie from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) as a peeping tom.
Jack Riley, who played Bob Newhart’s patient Elliot Carlin has graduated from patient to doctor, here playing Murray’s therapist Dr. Zieglar. Throw in comedians Johnny Dark, Bill Kirchenbauer and Vic Dunlop, as well as Jaye P. Morgan, disc jockey Machine Gun Kelly (who is also in Roller Boogie and Voyage of the Rock Aliens) and an incredibly young Andrew Dice Clay.
There really isn’t any story here, but you do get Billy Barty farting throughout the film and the heroes donning blackface to solve a crime. There’s also a gay copy team, so this movie goes out of its way to offend nearly everyone. That said, it does have Linda punching a really obnoxious rich girl, which makes the movie.
Yes, Nico Mastorakis, the same maniac who made Island of Death, Blind Date and The Zero Boys, made a Police Academy ripoff. It also checks off another box with an appearance by Phillip, who is pretty much James Bond. Also, because this is Mastorakis, there’s some full-frontal nudity.
Also, Mastorakis never meant to actually direct the film, but after seeing that some of the dallies, he fired the original director and took over.
Gerald Okamura, the Hard Master from the first G.I. Joe movie and one of the hatchet men in Big Trouble In Little China, is Chiba, a man who owns a ninja academy in Topanga Canyon. His enemy owns Beverly Hills Ninja Academy. And just like Camp North Star and Camp Mohawk, they must battle.
There’s a mime, a klutz, some attractive women, a wiseacre and all the things you expect from this genre. Is Police Academy ripoff a genre? It is now.
Becky LeBeau, whose IMDB resume has Joysticks, multiple David Lee Roth videos, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Back to School, The Under Achievers, Not of This Earth, Rock-A-Die Baby and both Munchie movies, is in this. That alone should give you reason to find a copy of your own.
Also: a band on the soundtrack is called The Piggy Dicks. That is now my favorite band name ever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This review was originally posted on our site on April 13, 2019, back when we were discussing teen sex comedies. A year later and not much has changed.
Any movie that starts with a plane crashing into downtown LA that’s played as a total farce is one I’m going to remember. Philo (Brett Cullen, who was on Falcon Crest and played Johnny Blaze’s dad in 2007’s Ghost RIder) has always wanted to be a pilot, but that crash — in a simulator — is because his contact lenses got knocked out by his friend and fellow pilot George (Donny Most, here booked as Don).
They decide that they want to stay on planes, so they enroll at Weidermeyer Academy, a stewardess school. Imagine Police Academy throughout this movie, with the teachers like Miss “Ironpants” Grummet as the older cops and the students as the cadets. Mary Cadorette — who played Vicky, the girl who finally got Jack Tripper to settle down and go from Three’s Company to Three’s a Crowd — is Kelly Johnson, an extremely clumsy girl. There’s a stereotypical gay guy. A frumpy overweight girl played by Wendie Jo Sperber, as Wendie played this role in nearly every film. There’s Wanda Polanski, a pro wrestler who just lost her latest boyfriend played by Conan the Barbarian‘s Sandahl Bergman. Julia Montgomery — yes, Betty Childs herself — plays an overly nice version of that role. Corinne Bohrer plays a punk rock girl in love with a biker (she’s a vet of these movies, appearing in Zapped!, Joysticks, Surf II, Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love and the fourth Police Academy movie). And oh yeah — Judy Landers as Sugar Dubois, a hooker with a heart of gold that’s on work release.
After going through hell, everyone graduates and gets a job at the struggling Stromboli Air. Their first flight has a blind person’s convention and a man with a bomb who doses people with LSD. Of course, our heroes have to land the plane and fix things. But don’t worry — everything works out just fine.
Voiceover artist Rob Paulsen (Pinky of Pinky and the Brain amongst 250 different animated characters and over 1000 commercials) shows up in a rare live-action role. Sherman Helmsley appears briefly as Mr. Buttersworth. And the owner of the school is played by William Bogert, who hosted the Frontline segments on Chapelle’s Show.
If you had Comedy Central in the 1990’s, there’s a good chance you saw this movie. Trust me. You did.
On Rotten Tomatoes, this movie has a rare approval rating of 0%, meaning no favorable reviews whatsoever. I’m going to say it right here and now: fuck you Rotten Tomatoes. Fuck you for ruining great looking posters with your shitty logo, fuck you for weaponizing criticism and fuck you for not having the sense of humor collectively to love this movie.
Well, I feel better. I’m also never getting to be a certified viewer on that site.
When he’s not talking to his fish Birdie, Commandant Eric Lassard has a good idea every now and then. Because the police force is overworked and understaffed, he’s recruiting civilian volunteers to work with his officers in a program called “Citizens On Patrol” (COP).
This movie neatly reinvents the premise of the first film, with Sergeant Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Hightower (Bubba Smith), Jones (Michael Winslow), Tackleberry (David Graf), Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurisnky), Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), Tackleberry’s wife Kathleen (Colleen Camp), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), and Nagata (Brian Tochi) training the new class while Captain Harris (G.W. Bailey) and Proctor (Lance Kinsey) back to torment them.
The Citizens on Patrol are played by Corinne Bohrer as Zed’s love interest Laura (she’s also in Joysticks, the immortal Surf II, Zapped! and Stewardess School, so you know she’s in my soul); voiceover actor Derek McGrath as Milt Butterworth; Scott Thomson — not from Kids In the Hall — as Sgt. Chad Copeland; Billie Bird as Tackleberry’s new best friend Mrs. Lois Feldman; David Spade (with Tony Hawk doing his skateboard stunts) as Kyle Rumford; Brian Backer (Rat from Fast Times At Ridgemont High) as Arnie Lewis and Tab Thacker (who would return to the series) as Tommy “House” Conklin.
If you were a skater back in 1987, this movie meant a lot to you. Beyond Hawk, Steve Caballero, Chris Miller, Tommy Guerrero, Lance Mountain and Mike McGill — pretty much the entire Bones Brigade — do an elaborate skating sequence. Stacy Peralta worked as the second-unit director on the film and ended up having to replace Hawk as David Spade’s stunt double as he was too tall.
They skate to Woodbine Centre, where Shazam! and The Freshman were also filmed before they get busted and forced into the COP — again, much like Mahoney in the initial film in this series.
Randall “Tex” Cobb and several gangs — including ninjas — end the movie pretty much reenacting Death Wish 3 without all the rape and gore.
Also, in the tradition of future big stars being in these movies, Sharon Stone plays Mahoney’s love interest. She attributes the collapse of her first marriage to why she made this movie, saying “hanging out with a gang of comedians, it was the best therapy.”
While this movie was being made, the cast also appeared in a full-motion Police Academy video game for Hasbro’s NEMO console. NBA Jam creator Mark Turmell told Polgyon, ““We actually made an interactive Police Academy game,” he says. “With the actors. We actually went down and had all of the production, weeks of filming, and it was all interactive. You could choose this path or that path. Everything was a big flow chart — that was a very exciting project.”
When Hasbro pulled the funding for the VHS powered video game system, the footage went away too. Somewhere, it still exists — a lost Police Academy film.
George Lollar (Grodin) takes his family on vacation to Club Sand, where everyone else is having sex while he has his kids in tow. There’s also a revolution happening, a staff that could care less about hospitality and Charles Grodin being, well, Charles Grodin.
It’s also the only woke movie I’ve seen in these 80’s comedies where the other f word gets someone in trouble. About time — I knew things were intolerant back then, but it’s nice to see that some people were also willing to tell people to back off.
Man, not to pile on the Grodin downers, but this movie is the kind of film that posits the question, “Can Charles Grodin be the Chevy Chase that people love or the Chevy Chase that people hate?” Remember that Casio keyboard that Chevy would randomly play on his abortive talk show? I’m shocked Grodin wasn’t lugging it around. There’s your answer.
Charles Sidney Grodin April 21, 1935 – May 18, 2021
“I started in movies in 1963,
and the first big one was Rosemary’s Baby in 1967.
While you don’t notice it right away, it finally dawns on you that 80% of the time, you’re doing nothing.”
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