Since I started this newsletter, I have had the honor of writing about some of the most important mythologies of our time. I’m talking about seminal sagas of adventure and daring like the Fast and the Furious franchise, timeless tales of tomfoolery like the Ernest P. Worrell motion pictures, essential exercises in scathing satire like the Saturday Night Live films, and perhaps the most important religious parable of them all, the Silent Night, Deadly Night series.
I have been doing God’s work. It’s crazy that this newsletter does not net me millions every month. I don’t know what’s wrong with the world. Probably the “Woke Mind Virus.”
The Woke Mind Virus, and not my shitty personality, ruined my marriage and my relationship with 14 of my 46 children, so I am against it! No, wait. That’s Elon Musk. I know that anyone who uses the phrase “Woke mind virus” regularly and in a non-ironic fashion is a fucking idiot and should be ignored, particularly if they are Elon Musk. Fuck that guy. You can read about why I hate him and think he’s terrible in articles I will share on his horrible website.
I don’t want to humblebrag, but I have powerful loser germs currently in the process of nearly bringing down what I will always call Twitter from the inside. I guess?
I volunteered to lustily devour all of these low culture staples because I love pop trash and want to celebrate it, not because I’m one of those high falutin’ snobs who look down at the Police Academy films from a place of unearned superiority.
No, I am writing about this shit because I love it despite literally referring to it as shit. I come to praise vulgar nonsense, not to bury it.
I must admit, however, that it hasn’t all been great. The Police Academy movies aren’t all guffaw-inducing. There are, to be brutally honest, some gags that do not entirely land. I wouldn’t compare the comic staging to Blake Edwards’ The Party or the dialogue to that of Preston Sturges.
Yet I’ve found much to enjoy in this informal ramble through one of the schlockier staples of American film comedy. Incidentally, I remember reading at one point that Key & Peele were going to reboot Police Academy.
That did not happen. I think Jordan Peele pursued a better path. He’s still young, yet he has earned the greatest title in all of art: frightmaster.
Like many of the previous entries, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege was helmed by a trusty television veteran, in this case, Peter Bonerz of The Bob Newhart Show. With a name like Peter Bonerz, he’s got to be good. Bonerz! That is hilarious. And his first name, Peter: also hilarious. That dude’s name is hilariously redolent of dongs and erections and Z, which is the ZANIEST of all letters. If my last name were Rabinz, it would instantly become at least thirty percent sassier.
Put it all together and you have hilarity squared. I imagine that everywhere Peter Bonerz went as a young person, people laughed uproariously and pointed at him mockingly when he told them his name, a moniker he stubbornly and inexplicably refused to change. So he learned to be the funniest wit this side of Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz to compensate.
Mank wrote ALL of Citizen Kane. Orson Welles was too much of a semi-literate theater buffoon to contribute so much as a comma to Mank’s solo masterpiece!
Herman “Mank” Mankiewitz wrote Citizen Kane and probably ghost-directed it as well. Peter Bonerz directed twenty-nine episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, 1981’s Nobody’s Perfekt, an Alex Karras/Gabe Kaplan/Robert Klein vehicle, and Police Academy 6. They are equivalent legacies and equal accomplishments.
Orson Welles had himself and the members of the Mercury Theater. He put them all in Citizen Kane, even the talentless slobs and complete bozos. Like Joseph Cotten. Everyone acts like he was so great, but could he replicate the sound and vibe of a martial arts flick, rock and roll concert, or helicopter landing in Vietnam using only his magnificent mouth and vivid imagination?
No. No, Joseph Cotten could not. It takes a true talent like the Guy from the Police Academy Movies Who Makes Crazy Noises with His Mouth to accomplish magic like that. In Police Academy 6 the aformentioned comic genius once again conjures an entire Shaw Brothers epic using just that fantastical tongue of his, as well as a Jimi Hendrix concert. Then, as if that somehow isn’t enough for one film series, let alone one movie, he make pretends to be a robot.
He’s all “bleep bloop. I am a robot.” And then the bad guy is all, “Holy shit! That guy is a robot.”
It is sublime. Incidentally, I was disgusted to discover that The Guy from the Police Academy Movies Who Makes Crazy Noises With His Mouth competed on America’s Got Talent and DIDN’T win!
Neither part of that makes sense to me. Of course, he has talent! He’s The Guy from the Police Academy Movies Who Makes Crazy Noises With His Mouth. He’s an entertainment legend. He is arguably our greatest, most beloved, and most important entertainer. Why would he be on something as banal and small as a televised talent show for amateurs and unknowns?
Winslow lost to singer Jimmie Herrod and the World Taekwondo Demonstration Team, which I assume is a martial arts organization. I know nothing about either act but must assume that they’re both talentless garbage compared to one of the most explosive, undeniable talents this side of the young Elvis Presley.
In the kind of enjoyably cheesy scene that makes Police Academy 6: City Under Siege a pleasant surprise during a riot, Winslow takes center stage at a comedy club and does a tight five, to the crowd's delight. Showcases don’t get cheesier or more shameless, but the sequence epitomizes what makes The Guy from the Police Academy Movies Who Makes Crazy Noises With His Mouth one of the franchise’s most enduring and irresistible elements.
It may be a fifth sequel to a bad film, but Police Academy 6 knows what works and plays to its strengths in the absence of franchise favorites Steve Guttenberg, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Tim Kazuzinsky.
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege brings in a pair of ringers in The Producers’ Kenneth Mars and Gerrit Graham of Phantom of Paradise, The Critic, Used Cars, and C.H.U.D 2: Bud the C.H.U.D, where he portrayed the role of Bud the C.H.U.D, as the bad guys.
Mars is a hoot as a corrupt Mayor who is so addled in his thinking that he can’t quite wrap his mouth around phrases as simple as “Have a nice day.” It’s an improvised running gag that never gets old, as does the appealingly cornball conceit of having the Mastermind side of Mars’ persona appear in silhouette to criminal cohorts led by Graham, who can’t make him out because they can’t see his face.
The film’s plot finds the kooky contemporary Keystone Cops of Commandant Eric Lassard (George Gaynes), including his boyishly handsome nephew Sergeant Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy), taking on the Wilson Heights gang.
The Wilson Heights gang is a three-person crime wave led by Gerrit Graham’s “Ace.” The Wilson Heights Gang is tiny, but if two insane clowns can form a posse, then three criminals can be a gang.
The conventional wisdom is that the years of McCoy gave no one joy, that he should never have been employed as he was not Steve Guttenberg but a cheaper, less famous goy. That’s not me. I’m a McCoy boy. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle star may be the Coy/Vance Duke of the franchise, but he feels more confident and at home here than in the previous film.
G.W. Bailey returns for more comic humiliation as Commandant Lassard’s enemy and rival. The man suffers the trials of Job. He is a bad person and a bad cop, but he’s so thoroughly embarrassed that you almost feel sorry for the chump. The things they do to the man’s poor chairs just aren’t right. They have no respect for his dignity.
In a scene that defines what the young people call “cringe,” we’re treated to a snippet of what the film still felt was a kooky fad in 1989: Hip Hop. Some soul brothers are busting rhymes, and Bubba Smith’s towering titan Lieutenant Moses Hightower and Marion Ramsey’s squeaky-voiced Sergeant Laverne Hooks respond in kind—and in rhyme—with lyrics so bad they single-handedly destroy the credibility of the police department as an institution, which may have been the point.
If you were a thirteen-year-old with indiscriminate taste in pop culture in 1989, as I was, you might find yourself leaving the cinema thinking, “Those 84 minutes passed in a relatively painless fashion!”
That may not seem like lofty praise, but Police Academy 6: City Under Siege sets the bar so low that it almost can’t help but clear it.
But seriously, Joseph Cotten was a badass motherfucker. His performance in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" may be my favorite one ever. How we wasn't nominated for an Oscar is beyond me, but he did have formidable competition: Gary Cooper in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Bogart in "Casablanca" - but they didn't win either! It was Paul Lukas, whoever the hell that was, for "Watch on the Rhine" - a movie that only made it to DVD by being part of a Bette Davis box set. Meanwhile, Police Academy 6 has had multiple pressings on DVD packaged on its own, not just bundled with other PA movies. So, clearly, there must be value in this movie for the market to have a higher demand for it than for "Watch on the Rhine".
Well you finally slipped up in part 6 and referred to Michael Winslow by name