I guess when you get to be director of a video shoot, you can be Lord of the Jungle or whomever you damn well please. Actor John Leslie, in The Cat Woman, establishes his domain when he takes the reigns of a complaint sexually manipulated woman, Kathleen Jentry, and turns her into a hissing coil of female ferocity. The not-so-subtle message he gets across to her is that we're all animals of some classification. Some are meant to rule and dominate. Like the Cat Woman.

This is foreign to Jentry's character, and at first she balks and rebels.

Give director Leslie credit. Instead of high-tech video gimmicks, he focuses on light, shadow, suggestion and Jentry's talent to metamorphose convincingly into a maneater. There's a bar scene that brings this all together as Jentry writhes in naked seductive anguish while Ray Victory plows Laurel Canyon over a bar stool. It's one powerful scene. I can compare Jentry's performance here to a younger, Brigitte Bardot in similar, but clothed instances in And God Created Woman.

Establishing this survival of the sexually fittest motif, Leslie places his female characters in blistering sexual circumstances. Veronica Hall is passionate and lethally sexy as is Alexa Parks in her bathroom scene.

You can name at least a half dozen awards categories that this feature should be nominated for, and it's early in 1988. As a director, Leslie in just three features, is achieving the total look — crisp, contained with excellent production standards, very hot sex, and intriguing story lines. The Cat Woman is a must-have, must-be-seen feature.