Girl in Gold Boots

...That really shouldn't have been combined. One half of the film is a woman chasing her dream of being a go-go dancer. The other half is about the seedy side of drug use, and drug pushers. Some films do well against the test of time. This one fell flat 10 seconds after its release. Bad acting and a second-rate band shoot this one down.

Joy Division's Ian Curtis would often cause chaos at his concerts, because his dancing style closely resembled an epileptic seizure: bystanders would call 911 just to be on the safe side. I've never known how Curtis developed such a bizarre style, but I'm fairly certain he owned a copy of "Girl In Gold Boots". I also can't fathom why a woman that a) clearly can't dance, b) clearly can't act and c) isn't married to someone powerful would get cast as the lead of a musical, but one thing's for certain: this is about a dozen times as entertaining as a competent musical. The movie was produced and directed by prolific Z-grade horror/sci-fi legend Ted V. Mikels, who seems out of his comfort zone when he can't use zombies, evil witches or crazed serial killers who feed victims to cats. The movie doesn't have any plot, it just drags itself from one strange dance scene to another. But that's fine by me. Seeing our lead and her marginally less untalented co-star dance like they're on stilts never stops being entertaining. If anything, this movie should have more awkward dancing rather than less. Very palatable, for all the wrong reasons of course.

Girl in Gold Boots was on IMDB's infamous Bottom 100 list (the list of the 100 lowest rated movies) until the number required for votes increased, it's directed by Ted Mikels (considered by many one of the worst filmmakers ever) and to this day it has an appalling score of 2,2. But probably I am not the typical viewer, since for me it was an ok movie and hence my score of 4.

The movie is about three youngsters that are going to Los Angeles. The title character is a girl that works in a bar and hopes to become a nightclub dancer, his boyfriend is a thug-looking guy that at times he is on a short fuse, and the third one is a cute guy that likes to sing and play guitar. When they finally get there they discover that is not like they hoped (the girl discovers that being a go-go dancer is not that great a job after all and the cute guy hangs around while he keeps an eye on the duo).

Despite it's a B-movie it's well made compared to many others of the time. It has decent cinematography, nice soundtrack with various good tunes of the time, during the credits and halfway in the movie various shoots of pretty girls dancing. Also, and this is the thing I liked most of the movie, the cute guy halfway sings a couple ballads just like Elvis Presley and he was the most endearing character of the trio. Sadly, since this movie was made by Ted Mikels (that already in 1968 had the reputation of being one of the worst directors ever), it automatically killed the actors' careers.

While at times the movie drags, it's watchable. And despite is made by Ted Mikels is competently made and it's an interesting time capsule as well.

This is a movie that wants to be kinda sleazy in a big bad way - you know, to show the dark underbelly and mean streets of the evil big city in a stark, realistic way, while contrasting it all with the hopes and dreams of a starry-eyed ingenue. And to show those dreams crashing down as the aforementioned starry-eyed ingenue is sucked into a downward spiral of sex, drugs and despair.

Sorry, though. This movie only manages to be lame. The fruity hippie-philosopher-musician (who can't play guitar worth a damn!!!), the allegedly menacing but actually ineffective villain (the world's oldest "bright young man"), the continuous near-nudity... well, OK, there are some good parts...

By the way, MST3K loves to show movies featuring greasy, oily villains, but the vaguely levantic nightclub owners in this movie definitely get my vote as most oleagenous of all.

When it comes to bad movies,this movie is bad. Not quite 'Hobgoblins' or 'Space Mutiny' bad, but bad enough. As for boring, this ranks up there with 'Blood Waters of Dr. Z.' and if you're an MST3K fan like me, you know how bad that is.

Now on to the movie. Well, if you mix together a bad plot, an overplayed dance number, lame acting, a cheesy script, drugs, and greasy non-threatening villains, you've pretty much have this movie. Oh my, and the sorry excuse for an editing job! This is the most poorly edited movie I've ever seen, next to 'Future War', another great MST3K episode. In one scene the mousy villain appears out of nowhere next to the 'heroes'. It's THAT BAD!

Movies are supposed to entertain and tell a coherent story line. This one fails horribly at both. Watch it only on MST3K! Anyone who enjoys it any other way is SICK!!!!!