Up the Academy

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Up the Academy is a 1980 American comedy film directed by Robert Downey Sr. It stars Wendell Brown, Tommy Citera, Ron Leibman, Harry Teinowitz, Hutch Parker, Ralph Macchio, Tom Poston, King Coleman, and Barbara Bach. The story follows four troublemaking cadets who are sent to Weinberg Military Academy as punishment: Chooch, the heir to an organized crime family; Ike, the son of a faith healer; Hash, the son of an Arab sheik; and Oliver, the son of a governor up for re-election. Their new commanding officer is the sadistic Major Vaughn Liceman.

Chooch tries to go straight and focus on his studies, while the others cause chaos. A new roommate, Rodney, arrives; he’s expelled from other schools for pyromaniac tendencies. When Oliver’s girlfriend Candy ends up at a nearby girls’ military school, the cadets plot to sneak out. Liceman is aware of their mischief and even has compromising photos of Oliver and Candy to threaten the governor’s re-election. The cadets suspect Chooch is the snitch, but Chooch discovers Rodney is the guilty party. They plan to counter blackmail Liceman by secretly taking dirty photos of Liceman with Candy and retrieving the original blackmail images. The plan unfolds during a soccer game, but Rodney has a change of heart and destroys Liceman’s cabin with a rocket. The academy wins the game, the blackmail plot is foiled, and Liceman chases the cadets as Alfred E. Neuman looks on in the final gag.

The film was an attempt to cash in on the success of National Lampoon’s Animal House. Mad Magazine’s involvement led to controversy: the publisher later said they wanted to disassociate the magazine from the film, and Warner Bros. was paid to remove Mad branding from home video releases. The movie was directed by Downey Sr. and featured a cast that included Ralph Macchio in his screen debut and Barbara Bach. It was shot mainly in Salina, Kansas, on the campus of St. John’s Military School, with some scenes filmed in nearby towns.

Up the Academy did not do well at the time of its release and was not a critical or commercial hit. It later gained a small cult following. In 2006, the original version was released on DVD. Downey Sr. famously called the film “one of the worst fucking things in history.”