Girl in Gold Boots

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.

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.

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.

...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.