Girl in Gold Boots

I absolutely love this movie, I don't know why. It's terrible in all of its parts. I've seen epileptics who have better dance moves than the title character and the girl Michelle. The songs are mediocre at best, the continuity and editing are both terrible, almost everybody in the film is oily looking and/or ugly, and there is no plot to speak of whatsoever. That said, for some reason despite these things(or maybe because of them), this movie is hilarious. The MST3K version is a delight, although something tells me that I'd still laugh a lot just watching it uncut. Michelle is not only the most untalented dancer that I've ever seen, she is dumber than a bag of hammers. 'Critter' is blandly good looking and not very talented at his chosen craft either. Buzz is a horrible little greaseball, and yet Michelle shacks up with him because he promises her that he can help her become a dancer with the aid of his drugged out sister(who also is a completely untalented dancer). But then, considering her disgusting drunker father, who she was still living and working with even though she had to be in her mid-twenties at least - Michelle does not have good taste in men or the brains to know when its a bad idea to shack up with a guy who carries a gun and pistol whips people with it at the drop of a hat. They all get mixed up with an oily drug dealer, and Buzz ends up killing a guy over heroin. He just gets better and better! The immensely lame 'plot' sort of trails off, as Critter goes off to fight in Vietnam after pummeling Buzz and Leo half to death. This after many, many horrible scenes of Michelle and/or Buzz's sister dancing. Stupid, completely stupid. But somehow, delightfully so. Makes me laugh every time I watch it.

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.

If it weren't for that brilliant show, no one would have ever seen this movie after the 60's...not that that's a bad thing.

This movie is a big, steaming pile of continuity errors and bad acting. There was a vague plot buried beneath all of this, however it was as thin as paper and made transparent by the grease dripping off of the actors.

There are countless errors and inexplicable scenes in throughout this movie. Who could forget Buz magically teleporting into the booth at the diner? Who could forget the utterly mind-boggling dune buggy scene? It seems as though this movie was made for MST3K, and, I warn you all, should not be viewed under any circumstances without the hilarious one-liners of Mike and the robots.

Girl in Gold Boots (1968)

** (out of 4)

Michele (Leslie McRay) is living in a small town working at a dead cafe for her drunk father. One day Buz (Tom Pace) stops in and offers her a chance for Hollywood. Michele has always wanted to be a go-go dancer so she goes along and the two head out for brighter days but end up in trouble with some crime boys.

Ted V. Mikels' GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS, for some reason, has a very bad reputation and I'm going to guess it's because it appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It seems if you were on that show you were automatically labeled as being awful. Having seen most of the director's work I can honestly say that this here is actually a fairly well-made picture compared to most of them.

Mikels made a career out of making ultra low-budget movies and some of them managed to gain some acclaim just for their camp value. This film here really isn't all that campy and for the most part I would argue that it's at least well-made and especially when you consider the budget. The film at least looks professional and a far cry from some of the movies that Mikels would direct in the 70s and 80s.

With that said, there's still no question that there's not too much entertainment here. The story is a pretty familiar one as a couple good people go looking for riches and end up in trouble. The performances range from decent to poor but with the lack of any real exploitation the film is just a tad bit too dull for its own good.

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.