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“I was thinking about calling it “Do You Want to Laugh or Cry?”” - Critter
The Girl in Gold Boots begins as a vision of your worst nightmares and gets worse.
Our story begins with Buzz, AKA “Icky Elf,” a young man of 35 who is on his way to Los Angeles, where he hopes to fulfil his life long dream of being in Los Angeles. On the way he meets Michelle, AKA “The Girl in Gold Boots,” an abused waitress who has dreams of becoming a famous dancer. Completing the trio is the appealingly named Critter, AKA “Yak Boy,” who has dreams of mopping floors and draft dodging.
It's not long before a love triangle of deadly consequences emerges between our heroes. Disturbingly, Michelle seems to have no say in the matter, with Buzz in particular insisting that he saw her first so he gets to keep her. Buzz and Critter fight over ownership of Michelle, whilst she looks on despairingly and occasionally cries. I'd like to be able to say that these scenes are a comment on misogyny, a dilemma for the female lead that is resolved through the remainder of the picture as she eventually finds empowerment on the other side of her journey. However, the director cruelly crushes these hopes in each following minute of the movie, as greasy guy after greasy guy ogles dancing girls, manipulates them with drugs and smacks them around a little bit in case you weren't depressed enough.
Eventually, the Dynamic Trio reach their destination: a spook-themed LA night club called The Haunted House, where Buzz's sister is the lead dancer. Our heroes soon meet club owner Leo, AKA “The Tower of Oil,” who apparently forces his right hand man to wear a poorly manufactured Halloween mask of his face. Leo is impressed by the gang and hires Michelle as a club dancer, Critter as the new cleaner, and Buzz as the local drug dealer. Yet more loosely connected scenes follow from this world of filth, and the audience is left feeling distraught and violated.
This is a film that disturbs me to my very core. Every aspect of it seems designed specifically to get under your skin and stay there long after you have finished watching. First of all, there's Buzz's unappealing habit of referring to money as bread. Then there's the way the film is shot, as if between shooting days the cameras were just left in the dirt where they lay, and when the audience finally manages to adjust to the amount of filth on the screen, the director cunningly introduces grease to the mix.
Another problem is that we have no idea who the hero is meant to be until 3/4's of the way in, when much to our dismay it turns out to be Critter, a cowardly man who sits and watches like a deer in the headlights as women get smacked around in his presence. He aptly describes himself as a man “who's got to find a hole to crawl into,” and I couldn't have said it better myself.
The episode itself is a brilliant one, and the episodes where the writers seem to be genuinely disturbed by the film are my personal favourites. There are too many great riffs to quote, but one of my favourites is Mike describing the cast of the film as “the Mount Rushmore of ugly.”
Good Thing
Mike's pool table gag. Perhaps it was the recent visit from Joel that season, or perhaps it was the impending cancellation of the series, but Mike began to play around with the shadowrama around this time, much like Joel frequently did in the early seasons of the show. In this episode, Mike conveniently has a pool cue on hand to play in the shady back room of the Ghost House. When Tom Servo asks him how long he's been waiting to use that gag, Mike responds: “Oh, not long... about eight years.”
Bad Thing
When first preparing this review I thought I had a conundrum on my hands. Which is worse: the “wounded turkey” dance of the Girl in Gold Boots, or the fledgling music career of our lovable hero Critter? Thankfully, as if blessed with a vision of my plight from the future, the director saw fit to combine the two elements in one skin crawling final scene of pure terror as the two love birds walk the beach to Critter's latest hit. Mike sums it up best in one of the funniest riffs of the episode: “Here's a puzzler: which of these two is worse at their art form?”
