Linnea Quigley and Ginger Lynn Allen endeavor to keep you "up all night" with Vinegar Syndrome's limited edition Blu-ray set of VICE ACADEMY 1-3.

Only slightly more ambitious than director Rick Sloane's bottom-of-the-barrel earlier efforts BLOOD THEATRE, THE VISITANTS, and HOBGOBLIN, VICE ACADEMY was a surprise hit on VHS and a high grosser on USA Up All Night leading to five more sequels. Nudity is surprisingly tame, but the film proves so enjoyable dumb that it zips by and earns chuckles even at its lamest. Sloane obviously did not research but does not seem to care, depicting the vice academy like a high school class with Allen and Quigley firing barbs at each other in a believably catty manner and such laughable plot points like DiDi discovering evidence against the pornographers in the form of talent release forms that state the real age of the performers as minors. Sloane utilizes sound effects to convey more than he can show, but it is laughably amusing even when it is not played for a joke, as is his attempts to make cramped locations see more spacious like the same corridor shot form different canted angles to convey to make a warehouse stacked with crates appear labyrinthine during a chase scene. Quigley seems hip to the ludicrous dialogue and characterization while Allen, who had just left adult films a year before, is quite believable as a stuck up prude that one does not miss her lack of exposure. Storied porn starlet Viper (SUGAR PUSSY) appears as the empowered female porn director ("You're not a sister!" she says to DiDi while getting handcuffed) and actor/art director Mark Richardson appeared in all six films and supplied the theme song under the name Marky Desade. Cinematographer Stephen Ashley Blake also shot David Decoteau's SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA with Quigley.

Quigley, Allen, and Hamil return in VICE ACADEMY PART 2 which takes off where the first left off. Newly-graduated, Holly no longer has her daddy's help and she is forced to work with DiDi. After a botched arrest in which their vying for the collar results in an injury to self-proclaimed stud officer Petrolino (Scott Layne, LITTLE SECRETS), Miss Devonshire reassigns them to the switchboard under Jeannie (Jo Steele, MIND, BODY & SOUL) who spends more time flirting with truckers on the radio than taking calls. When DiDi and Holly mistake Petrolino's call for backup to be another pervert on the line, he demands that they be fired and Devonshire sends them on another assignment from which she hopes they will not return: infiltrating the nightclub lair of villainess Spanish Fly (Marina Benvenga) who contaminates the water supply with the aphrodisiac. The Police Commissioner (Jay Richardson, HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS), on the other hand, plans to do away with female vice officers completely with the introduction of android BimboCop (Teagan Clive, SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS), but someone sabotages her at the very moment that Didi and Holly could use a robot rampage.

A bit higher-budgeted than the first film, VICE SQUAD 2 is not so much opened up as even more eventful with a plot that seems to switch gears every few minutes. There is no pretense of eroticism as all of the cheesecake and beefcake is played up for laughs (Allen addresses the camera at the start noting the audience's demand for more sexuality than the first part but Layne shows more than both starlets). The girls' shared disgusts with sleazy Petrolino as they separately try to seduce him to get promotions is played as much comic potential as Spanish Fly's bondage torture of the officer. BimboCop falls flat but the leads are ably supported by Hamil and Richardson who would also appear in the rest of the series installments, and the climax cleverly dovetails into the third film (which is especially helpful since Quigley was replaced at the last moment in that one). Mark Richardson is on hand again as another lackey to the lead villainess. The film was photographed by Tom Callaway (DEMON WIND), another underappreciated professional whose filmography crossed paths with Charles Band, Roger Corman, and David Decoteau among others.

In VICE SQUAD 3, DiDi has been promoted and Holly is under constant threat of a BORN INNOCENT prison initiation from her butch cellmate (Dee Anne Helsel) while undercover keeping an eye on inmate Melanie (porn star and Dolly's cousin Julia Parton, BREAST TO BREAST). Devonshire (Jordana Capra, THE VISITANTS this time around), however, finds a new pain-in-the-neck in DiDi's cousin Candy (Elizabeth Kaitan, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE NEW BLOOD) who does not just dress slutty for the job. Holly is unable to foil Melanie's escape, but Devonshire and Candy also end up in trouble with the commissioner when they are also caught off guard when the escapee robs a liquor store. Melanie flees the shootout into a field undergoing experimental chemical spraying and emerges as green-haired supervillain Malathion ("Wait'll they get a load of me!"). Malathion and her henchman (Mark Richardson again) crash the field games between the female prisoners and the vice academy, escaping with several of her inmates except for former cellmate Samantha (JASON LIVES' Darcy DeMoss who disliked the film and demanded that her name be removed from the credits) who has won a weeklong furlough in the games and wants to turn her life around. While working as a singing telegram clown, Samantha helps foil one of Malathion's robberies and the commissioner sees potential in her as a vice officer; Holly, however, suspects that Samantha is being paid by Malathion to look the other way, and Devonshire is jealous that the commissioner wants to pay her fifty-cents more an hour than herself after six years on the job.

Just as frenzied in its pacing and plotting as the second film, VICE ACADEMY PART 3 seems to model itself on Tim Burton's BATMAN at first, but Samantha's arc from criminal to hero falls by the wayside for long stretches while Holly and Candy snipe at each other (Allen is her entertainingly bitchy self but Kaitan has no chemistry with her) and then fall all over each other trying to "assist" studly Professor Kaufinger (Playgirl model Steve Mateo). The climax, does however, ape the BATMAN TV series with the police setting up a recycling event in order to draw out Malathion (who has demonstrated her contempt for the environment by robbing women with aerosol hairspray). Parton is a standout while Richardson does what he can with less screen time and Capra's Devonshire strives for both comedy and pathos. Nudity is relegated to buxum burlesque dancer Toni Alessandrini (BACHELOR PARTY) in cutaways that could be easily snipped out. HOBGOBLIN's Jeffrey Culver appears as the liquor store owner. Allen would leave after the third film but Kaitan would remain for the final three with Rocki Garner (BIKINI SQUAD) replacing DeMoss as Samantha in the fourth film and Raelyn Saalman (FRIEND OF THE FAMILY) for the last two films.

Released to home video by Prism Entertainment and cable by USA, all six of the VICE ACADEMY films were released to DVD in 2002 by Madacy Entertainment utilizing the existing video masters but all featuring commentaries by Sloane which were carried over to BCI's 2008 editions. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfers are all derived from 2K scans of the original 35mm camera negatives and look exceptionally clean and colorful with only rare instances of jitter and dings that likely happened in the camera while the available light shooting of some of the night exteriors means the image is not always as crisp as it could be had the filmmakers not gone guerilla and actually lit the locations (although Callaway's photography on the second film suggests he was more innovative in lighting quickly and with limited instruments than the other two DPs). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 audio tracks are listed as stereo on the back cover but the first film was always mono and sounds it here, with the lossless audio making the lack of directional qualities of the ricocheting sound effects as apparent as some bad ADR. The sequels were Ultra Stereo and there are comic and action sound effects but the music mainly gets the spread here. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for all three.

The Sloane commentaries have not been carried over, but Sloane has recorded all new ones – referring to them as the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second anniversary commentaries – in which he reveals that the reason that there is not a lot of nudity is because he knew it would be cut for cable so he structured the shots so they could be cut without disrupting the music or dialogue. He discusses the chemistry between Allen and Quigley, how believable their unrehearsed fight scene was to him and the cast, shooting in cramped locations and trying to give the illusion of more depth, the evolution of the series towards more MARRIED WITH CHILDREN-type comedy, casting Playgirl centerfolds and Chippendale dancers like Layne and Matteo in the male love interest roles, and the changing cast: Quigley bowed out of the third film at the last minute, Hamil was only absent from the third film in which she was played by his original choice Jordana Capra (THE VISITANTS), and that he wanted Melissa Ann Moore (SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE) to play Bimbocop but had Teagan imposed on him.