Catman in Lethal Track is about a guy who is scratched by a radioactive cat, and imbued with special catlike powers--or rather just special powers. He then uses these powers to take on an evil Satanic priest who's doing evil things. At the same time, out in the countryside, an evil gang led by a man with an eye patch is kidnapping women and holding them hostage, among other evil things. A young woman disguised as a man rides into town on her dirt bike with plans to take him down. It's not going to be easy, so she needs to recruit as many locals as she can to help her. What this story has to do with the Catman story is anyone's guess, but the question is, will Catman and this girl disguised as a man be able to prevail in their individual struggles?
I think this is about how you'd expect a Godfrey Ho superhero movie to go, and that can either be a good thing for you or a bad thing. For me, I enjoy these kinds of movies, so it was a good thing. I mean, look at that superhero costume? Forget spandex, this is some kind of maintenance worker's jumpsuit with a jumping black cat logo, combined with some kind of as-seen-on-TV sunglasses that diminish glare while you're driving. You could just as easily see this guy in the mall in the commercial for the glasses getting people to try them on and them being wowed by how great they look. On top of that you have that secondary story that every Godfrey Ho film has, kind of like how Seinfeld always had a couple threads going in one episode, and this one made about as much sense as the Catman story--like why did everyone think this girl was a guy? Because she could fight and rode a dirt bike? Beyond the splicing of the two unconnected stories, we also had the Ho American pop culture alchemy, especially in the baddie's gang that looked like extras from Class of Nuke 'Em High. I think this should be a staple of any Godfrey Ho movie night.
This is our sixth Ho film on the site, but only the third of this kind where he's splicing two movies together, the other three were new action films he made with Cynthia Rothrock. When I look at my first review of one of these, Ninja: Silent Assassin in 2011, it was like I got it, but didn't get it. By the time I had Jon Cross on to discuss these films in 2020, I had a completely different perspective, and it was with that perspective that I continued with the podcast episode this past year with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, and went into watching this film. When I had Jon on in 2020, he quoted a Den of Geek article that referred to these films as "cinematic anarchy," and I think that best describes them. There's something about what Ho does with the medium of cinema that is so far outside what anyone who invented it could have conceived of, that that in of itself is fascinating, and for me, entertaining. It'll be interesting as we go through more of Ho's catalog, especially with how many are available on Tubi and YouTube, but I think it'll be a fun ride.
The superhero movie in modern cinema is seen as this juggernaut moneymaker, which is nice, but I think there are people who want to delve outside of that a bit. When I was younger, all I wanted was to see my heroes together the way they were in the comics, but when I got my wish, I discovered they made them all so interconnected, meaning if I watch one I may not get what's happening if I didn't watch another, which in turn I wouldn't get if I didn't watch these other two, and so on. Also the massive budgets and long runtimes have turned me off some, which is a shame. That's where something like this can fill a void that I didn't even know existed. On the other hand, while this has some notes we expect from a superhero movie, it is also so different from what we expect from a movie in this genre. It's not like Toxic Avenger or Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, which mimic the style of superhero movies but do a great job mocking it; this only has part of that mimicry, but then the Ho construct of splicing in the second film, plus his attempts to pander to American pop culture trends, as opposed to making fun of them like you'd see in a Troma movie, which makes it all something unique to Ho. I don't even know if it would fit with a Santo movie, but that's another type of non-mainstream superhero franchise that comes to mind. Like everything Ho, it's sui generis.
But the Ho approach opens the door to more ideas, right? What if someone created a rip off of Batman, and spliced it with an early 90s short-lived TV show? Or low-budget movie? Like One West Waikiki, which was around for like 20 episodes; or maybe The Lost World, with it's three seasons, just splice in an episode, so you have a fake superhero that's Batman-esque doing stuff, while in another story you have Jennifer O'Dell running around in the jungle. The problem with that, of course, is all those shows have rights holders, plus the SAG implications would make the film more expensive--but as expensive as a standard Marvel movie production. On the other hand, what a fun way for, say, Paramount/CBS to get into the superhero game, by taking old CBS properties like One West Waikiki and combing them with stories about men or women with superpowers in maintenance jumpsuits and As-seen-on-TV sunglasses. Modern mainstream audiences wouldn't know what to do with them. Can you imagine critics trying to review something like that? Or current comic book movie fans who live by their precious canons. There is no "canon" in a Godfrey Ho movie, even if you used Cheryl Ladd and Richard Burgi in multiple films, there's no rule that says they have to even be the same people, which would blow the minds of toxic canon extremists. They'd be flooding Paramount studios with death threats because their sensibilities would be so hurt. The level of anarchy in something like that is too fun to fathom--sans the death threats, of course. If you need to send death threats to studios you're a loser who should be in jail.
Finally, as I mentioned above, this is available on YouTube. In the IMDb user reviews, people mentioned finding cheap DVDs. As far as I can tell now, YouTube is the way to go, but what a way to go it is. The advent of YouTube, and the number of films like this that you can find on there, is immense. There's always the risk of a copyright claim taking down the YouTube account that uploads them though, and to be honest you never know where that'll come from--when I first started the DTVC, I had a YouTube account with the username Deepcheeks that I used to post MSTK episodes I had, and advertised the site in the episode descriptions. What got me clipped wasn't the people with MST3K putting in a claim, but the rights holder to one of the movies in the episode, and if you get clipped, that causes all your uploads to go away, not just the one that the claim was on. I guess what I'm saying is, while YouTube is great, it's also tenuous. One big account, JCT, looks like they're gone, and with them The Secret of King Mahi's Island, a rare early Gary Daniels flick. I found another version up there, but for us low-budget cinephiles, it's a tough way to live. A film like Catman in Lethal Track deserves a better transfer and physical release, or at least an official release on major streaming service, because God forbid the accounts that uploaded it get clipped, this treasure is gone. I feel like there is enough of a market for it, but maybe I'm wrong.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can find this on used DVD, but YouTube is probably your best bet for now. It's a fun Godfrey Ho take on the superhero movie, a nice counter to the current superhero ecosystem that you may not even know you needed.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319153
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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