MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Highway 61’ Celebrates Rock Spirit

“Highway 61” (NuWilshire) is a movie of, by and for rock ‘n’ rollers. It’s an outlaw fantasia, a comic-book odyssey with a soul full of rhythm and blues--and it’s made from inside its subject, with hip affection and a minimum of commercial hype or hypocrisy.

It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s fun. It has a bounce, a swing, a rhythm; it sails along to a wildly infectious score by Nash the Slash. The moviemakers are kidding their characters: naive small-town trumpeter Pokey Jones (Don McKellar) and outlaw roadie Jackie Bangs (Valerie Buhagiar), who hit the highway with a coffinful of drugs and the devil on their tail. But they also identify with them, share some of their dreams.

The picture begins at the top of Highway 61, in the Canadian backwoods town of Pickerel Falls, where boy meets girl and Satan catches their scent. McKellar’s Pokey is Innocence and Buhagiar’s Jackie is Experience. (Is her name a dirty joke or was she christened in honor of the late rock critic Lester Bangs?) But they’re also lovers-on-the-run--on an outlaw journey whose real purpose, the drug-smuggling, is unknown to Pokey--and the hellhound chasing them. Mr. Skin (beautifully, eerily played by Earl Pastko) is a cut-rate devil for our times. As he pursues the pair, Skin keeps dabbling in bingo tournaments and buying souls at outrageous bargain prices: $20 or a bottle of whiskey. His hell turns out to be a suburban Mississippi clapboard house with photos of the damned on his walls.

The movie is about initiation: into rock, into life on the road, into sex and romance, into American Dreams, into Satan and his mysteries--but it doesn’t push its points. It keeps that kidding stance, that Mad Magazine tone, even though the actors (particularly McKellar, Buhagiar and Pastko) can suggest depths of passion. McKellar, who also wrote the witty script, has a sad, elfin presence, Pastko an oily, lizard-like magnetism. And there are amusing turns by real-life rockers Art Bergmann, Jello Biafra and Tav Valco--and by Peter Breck of “The Big Valley” and “Shock Corridor” who shows up as a small-town show business aspirant with a family of dancing daughters and a rotting smile.

In this sleazily incandescent gallery, Buhagiar is the most remarkable movie presence; her frizzy hair and angular, hatchet-thin features suggest a Renaissance Angel gone punk.

The filmmakers who worked on “Highway 61”--director Bruce McDonald, writer-star McKellar, Buhagiar, cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak and others--were together before on another, lower budget rock odyssey called “Roadkill,” and they’re young enough to capture some of rock’s rebel spirit. They’re outsiders themselves--Canadians steeped in American pop culture--and it’s obvious that the journey down Highway 61, that picaresque stretch of road from Ontario to New Orleans that Bob Dylan immortalized in his great album “Highway 61 Revisited”--has a near-mythic significance for them.

“Roadkill” was funny, scrappy and New Wave-ish. This movie is more opulent: drenched with color, atmosphere and scenery, infused with that adventurous “Easy Rider” mood of the early ‘70s American road movies--even though, at the end, it seems incomplete.

Or evasive, maybe. This movie is better on articulation than heart. Good as these moviemakers are, at its core, their story is a sexual dream fantasy about making it with an outlaw babe. The movie veers into frivolity, loses some charge and resonance. Not completely. With its rich, earthy road colors and lyrical neons, and its wailingly appropriate score--ending with a blast from blues men Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee --”Highway 61” (MPAA-rated R for language and a scene of sensuality) always has something to entertain us.

‘Highway 61’

Valerie Buhagiar: Jackie Bangs

Don McKellar: Pokey Jones

Earl Pastko: Mr. Skin

Peter Breck: Mr. Watson

A Shadow Shows Entertainment Corp. presentation, released by Skouras Pictures. Director Bruce McDonald. Producers Colin Brunton, McDonald. Executive producer Daniel Salerno. Screenplay by Don McKellar. Cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak. Editors Michael Pacek, Steve Munro. Costumes Derek Baskerville, Martha Snetsinger. Music Nash the Slash. Art director Ian Brock. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (Language and a scene of sensuality).