In 1981, on the heels of his success in the sitcom “Different Strokes,” Gary Coleman was being courted to star in a number of feature films. The script he eventually chose as his big-screen debut? A comedy called “On the Right Track.”

The movie would earn just $5.9 million at the box office and a Worst Actor Razzie nomination for Gary Coleman. It isn’t even available today on DVD. It’s mostly been forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of cinema history. But I’m going to do my part to revive its memory here because I watched this movie millions of times as a kid, so it is burned into my brain, and also because it involves horse racing.

Yes, that’s right, the “track” in the title refers to the racetrack. Well, it may be more accurate to say that the racetrack is one of the “tracks” that the title refers to. The other track is the train tracks that run beneath Chicago’s Union Station where Lester, Gary Coleman’s character, lives in a locker.

The orphaned Lester doesn’t sneak off to live in a locker each night. No, for some reason everyone who works at the train station knows the little shoeshine boy lives parentless in the locker and is totally fine with that situation. So much so, in fact, that when the mayor of Chicago schemes to move Lester into an orphanage where he belongs, the various workers and passengers that frequent Union Station rally to keep Lester in his locker for as long as he wants. They shower Lester with gifts — a new shoeshine box, a brand new Atari, whatever he desires (other than a loving family and a home, at least at first). And why? Because Lester has an almost supernatural ability to pick winners from the Daily Racing Form.

Customers getting their shoes shined by Lester discover his strange ability almost by chance, simply by asking him who he likes in the race. Soon, people realize he’s never wrong. Then the lines for his shoe shines stretch for blocks. Luckily, Lester is street smart and doesn’t let anyone take advantage of him, but just in case he has a pizza store owner and arcade attendant who work in Union Station looking after him.

The mayor, who at first tries to get Lester into an orphanage, finally admits defeat and decides instead to use Lester’s powers for good — he actually suggests using Lester’s ability to pick horse racing winners as a way to relieve the city’s debt! A plan that isn’t just ignorant of how pari-mutuel betting works, it also is probably more illegal than letting a homeless kid live in a locker!

The movie isn’t actually all that terrible. In fact, most of the insane plot points I’ve raised here only help make the movie more entertaining. It’s campy and fun. And there are about a million more ridiculous twists in the movie, too. The mob gets involved; Lester tries to start his own shoe-shine business.

One thing this movie points to is a time when Hollywood was still willing to make movies that involved horse racing. It’s interesting to watch a movie where so much of the city of Chicago is fixated on the Daily Double each day.

The movie also launched Gary Coleman’s film career, despite his Razzie nomination for his terrible acting. He followed up “On the Right Track” with a string of movies where he played a kid doing adult things, like “Jimmy the Kid” and “The Kid With the 200 IQ.”

Today, you’re hard-pressed to find “On the Right Track.” It isn’t on DVD or available for streaming. You’ll need to find an old VHS copy at your parent’s house when you’re home for the holidays, like I did, if you want to relive this 1980s comedy classic.

For now, you’ll have to settle for watching the trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UslteqvOtiI