Josie Cotton’s B-Movie Guide “Girl In Gold Boots”

Josie Cotton may have stolen the prom scene in a cult-classic film (1983’s Valley Girl, singing new-wave hit “Johnny, Are You Queer?”), but she never committed such cinematic high-camp crimes as found in vintage b-movies. Each day this week, Cotton surveys one of her favorite films and offers a song from her latest album, Invasion Of The B-Girls. Read our Q&A with Cotton and her memoir about “Johnny, Are You Queer?”

Girl In Gold Boots (1968)
This is undoubtedly one of the worst movies I have ever seen, in which insanely bad dancing hits an all-new low. Girl In Gold Boots is a kind of go-go morality play, a tribute to never letting a lack of talent get in the way of pursuing your dreams. Drink it in!

Michelle, a witless waitress/”dancer” escapes her drunken father/boss/short-order cook by peeling off to California with Buzz, her hoodlum manager. They are headed for his sister’s “groovy Hollywood nightclub.” What dreams await them on their road trip from hell? You guessed it: drugs, sleazy, greasy club managers, gangs, guns, an escape into prison and go-go dancing the likes of which you have never seen, where best-forgotten careers rise and fall in one bad bugaloo leap off the stage.

“I’m gonna be a dancer, Critter, and a good one!” Michelle tearfully tells her hitchhiking future love interest, as if she had considered being a bad dancer but had somehow decided to be a good one instead. Whew! Let’s not forget the famous scene in which the always packin’ Buzz seems to have been teleported, mid-conversation, into a diner booth with Michelle and Critter. “Where did that dude come from?” you might ask. Apparently, director Ted Mikels didn’t notice Buzz wasn’t previously in the scene, and that alone makes this movie worth seeing.

And yet … and yet … the theme song for Girl In Gold Boots, cheesy harmonica and all, lives in infamy. With memorable lines such as “Don’t you standin’ still, baby” [sic] and “Keep your gold boots movin’,” you can’t help but be drawn into the glittering world that John Waters so brilliantly described as “the hideous sorrow of low-rent go-go dancers.” People, it doesnt get skankier than this. We thank you, Nina Footwear, for footing the bill on this pony-prancing meltdown.

“Girl In Gold Boots” from Josie Cotton’s Invasion Of The B-Girls (download):