GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS

GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS

Michele (Leslie McRay) works as a waitress at a dead-end drive-by cafe. Her alcoholic father (Victor Izay) hurls abuse at her occasionally from his position as chef in the kitchen. Fed up with this non-existence, Michele takes one backhander too many from her old man and decides to quit her job when beau Buz (Tom Pace) pops by with the promise of a better life.

Hopping in Buz's car, Michele is whisked off on a road trip designed to help her fulfil her dream of becoming a go-go dancer. Buz reckons his stoner sister Joanie (Bara Byrnes) can help with this.

Following a spot of bother with two young hoodlums, Buz and Michele run into handsome rebel Critter (Jody Daniels). From there, this ill-fitting trio travel across America with one mission in mind. Along the way, drug deals, murder, pistol-whipping, bad pop songs and - of course - dancing (terrible, terrible dancing to be precise) punctuate the journey.

Widely regarded as Mikels' worst film, 1968's BOOTS is indeed a chore to sit through. It starts off decently enough, go-go dancers gyrating beneath opening titles while Chris Howard's chirpy titular pop song place out of synch to their movements. Trashy from the get-go, gaudy in design and quaintly dated, all seems well.

But then, the bad acting and flat script wears on ... and on ... on. None of the actors, which include family members and friends of Mikels, have charisma. None of them. Ugly camerawork and largely incompetent editing assist the tepid dramatics in robbing scenes that should titillate - scuffles, car chases, more dancing and casual naive misogyny - of all entertainment value. At 90 minutes in length, the viewing becomes painful by the halfway mark.

All of which adds insult to injury, then, when it all peters out horribly (even though it only barely got going in the first place) and limps towards a cop-out ending that can best be described as twee. Grindhouse gold, or even stock B-movie fare, this isn't by the time it expires.

Part of their "Ted V Mikels Collection", 88 Films release GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS onto region-free UK DVD in what appears to be its original ratio, 1.78:1. The framing certainly appears to be accurate in this largely pleasing anamorphic presentation.

Colours are natural-looking if a little faded; blacks remain stable for the most part. There are some minor flickering issues during a couple of the darkest scenes, but by-and-large the contrast looks fair. The print used does suffer from more than its fair share of damage - it looks, in fact, a lot like one of those rough-and-ready After Hours presentations from Alternative Cinema. An NTSC-to-PAL conversion by all accounts, the results here aren’t as horrific as previous examples of this maligned practice tend to be.

I would’ve suggested that 88 Films have sourced the same print as the 2001 US DVD release from Image. However, it’s worth noting that this release is missing approximately 5 seconds of footage, which appears at the end of a dance rehearsal scene. It’s nothing of a contentious nature – it hasn’t been snipped by our scissor-happy censor friends. It’s more likely due to reel damage. But, anyway, these inconsequential seconds are missing. Ergo, the total feature running time on this PAL disc is 90 minutes and 42 seconds.

English mono audio is decent, albeit there is a slight echoing effect to some dialogue. This appears to have more to do with the manner in which the film was shot. A lot of the dialogue is slightly out of synch with the characters' lips. Again, this is due to the audio being added in post-production rather than a transferring flaw.

The disc opens to a static main menu page. There is no scene selection menu page.

Extras begin with an audio commentary track from Mikels. He’s not the most fluent of hosts, often leaving pregnant pauses between his comments. Rather than offer anecdotes or trivia - though he does, occasionally - he tends to talk to the screen in response to the action, akin to how my Nana used to shout at the screen while watching 'Coronation Street' on TV. We learn the price of gasoline in 1968, how many kids Mikels' wife (who cameos in the film) had, and ... well, not much more, to be honest.

The film’s original theatrical trailer clocks in at 2-and-a-half minutes in length. It looks a little worn by age but otherwise is actually more entertaining than the film it represents.

We also get a plethora of trailers for other 88 Films titles: THE DOLL SQUAD, TWO MOON JUNCTION, THE TOXIC AVENGER, CASTLE FREAK, THE CORPSE GRINDERS, HIDEOUS!, BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS, ROBOT WARS, SLICED AND DICED and DOLLMAN.

GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS is pretty poor fare, even by Mikels standards. It’s not completely useless, and for fans (serious fans, that is!) this release is certainly worth a look.

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by 88 Films
Region 2
Rated 18
Extras :
see main review
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