Girl in Gold Boots

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 (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.

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.

If Offbeat Cinema hasn't grabbed Girl In Gold Boots for one of their late evenings roasts than they are not doing their job in finding some of the worst cinema put on celluloid. This must have been a great second feature in the drive-ins in 1968 when people were getting down to something else.

On That Seventies Show one of the funniest lines I ever heard was from pretty and vapid Mila Kunis who said that nothing was ever going to get in the way of her ambition to becoming a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. That same sense of purpose exists with our leading lady Leslie McRae who dreams of going out to Los Angeles and becoming a go-go dancer. It certainly beat slinging hash in that New Mexico diner with her drunken father. When Tom Pace comes into her life saying he's going to LA where his sister does just that, McRae hears enough and jumps in the car with him. Along the way they pickup another wandering stranger Jody Daniels and the three of them are off to Tinseltown after Pace robs a filling station.

They find Pace's sister, a drugged out dancer working for club owner Mark Herron who's got his fingers in a lot enterprises, mostly illegal. Pace doesn't really care about his sister, he just sees opportunity for himself and McRae gets hired as a new dancer and Daniels becomes a club janitor. Herron indicates that Daniels could do better for himself with him and you can take that any number of ways.

The film is one sorry mess, lousy sound recording, inane plot, totally bogus climax to this piece of drama. If you recognize the name of Mark Herron it will be because you remember who was Judy Garland's fourth husband. Mark wasn't doing that great before he married Judy, and when she cut him loose this was the best his meager talent could get.

Oh and the music is bad Sixties music and the acting on the level of some of my grade school plays. When will Offbeat Cinema be showing Girl In Gold Boots?

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.