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"Highway 61" opens up north in the Canadian hamlet of Pickerel Falls, where an earnest young man named Pokey Jones operates a barber shop and hangs out with his buddies. One day he discovers a frozen body in a bathtub out in the shop's backyard. He hauls the stiff into the shop and attempts to blow-dry him back to life, but nothing doing. Not long after, a girl named Jackie Bangs wanders into town and claims the dead body as her brother.
We have reason to believe Jackie has never seen the body before. She's a roadie with a rock band, has stolen some drugs, and needs the corpse because it offers an ideal way to smuggle the drugs into the United States. She meets Pokey, who as discoverer of the body has made the front page of the local paper, and talks him into driving her and her "brother" to New Orleans.
That's the setup for "Highway 61," a good-natured, oddball road comedy that travels from Ontario to Louisiana while hardly encountering anybody along the way who is not a prime candidate for one of those tabloid TV shows. Pokey, played by Don McKellar , is a likable small-town guy who dreams of making it into showbiz as a trumpet player. And Jackie ( Valerie Buhagiar ) is a survivor looking for the angles.
What sets the movie apart from other road movies is the presence of another character, Mr. Skin (Earl Pastko). Mr. Skin is, in fact, Satan; he amuses himself and feeds his cynicism by seeing how cheaply he can buy human souls. Some souls change hands for as little as a bottle of whiskey. He takes Polaroids of his conquests and shuffles through them like a deck of cards on which he can perform unspeakable tricks.
Most of the people Pokey and Jackie encounter along the way look like models for carnival sideshows. Among them is a father (Peter Breck) who runs a traveling troupe consisting of his three daughters, who talk in unison and dance in a disturbingly mechanical style like wind-up Barbie dolls. There are also incurious service station owners who are not any more intrigued than absolutely necessary by the way Pokey has to keep borrowing ice to put in the coffin that's strapped to the top of his car.
One of the problems with a movie like this is that it has to end, which means the Satan business has to be resolved one way or another, when in fact the movie would be most comfortable just staying on the road indefinitely.
" Angel Heart ," another devil movie that hit the road for New Orleans, had a neat twist at the end.But "Highway 61" does not take Satan quite seriously enough, I think, to give him his due. Instead, the movie ends sort of whimsically, as it began.
What's good about it are the performances by McKellar and Buhagiar, who look surprisingly like real people and not like movie actors, and a rock sound track by Nash the Slash, a group (or person) previously unknown to me, that's fun to listen to. McKellar also wrote the movie, and puts in a lot of quiet little conversational twists, small whimsical observations and wistful asides, that are as insubstantial as the wind, but leave a nice lingering tone.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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Film credits.
Highway 61 (1992)
Rated R For Language and A Scene Of Sensuality
102 minutes
Valerie Buhagiar as Jackie Bangs
Don McKellar as Pokey Jones
Directed by
- Bruce McDonald
- Don McKellar
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Highway 61 (1991)
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Don McKellar (Pokey Jones) Valerie Buhagiar (Jackie Bangs) Earl Pastko (Mr. Skin (a.k.a. Satan)) Peter Breck (Mr. Watson) Art Bergmann (Otto) Jello Biafra (Customs Agent #1) Hadley Obodiac (Customs Agent #2) Tav Falco (Motorcycle Gang Leader) Tracy Wright (Margo) Johnny Askwith (Claude)
Bruce McDonald
A small-town barber goes on a road trip from Thunder Bay to New Orleans with an unpredictable woman and a coffin.
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Highway 61 Reviews
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When a naive Canadian barber finds a corpse, a flamboyant roadie turns up to claim her brother's body and persuades the gullible guy to drive her and the deceased to New Orleans.
An eventful, music-oriented road movie that defies easy classification, HIGHWAY 61 reconfirms that Canadians are quite leery of the US, that huge, loud neighbor from whence so many marvels and nightmares come. The title refers to a stretch of highway that longitudinally spans the continent, linking New Orleans at one end with Thunder Bay, Ontario, at the other. It's in the little town of Pickerel Falls that Pokey Jones (Don McKellar), a humble barber and frustrated trumpet player, is thrust into the spotlight when an anonymous, drunken youth happens to die of exposure in his yard. Enter Jackie Bangs (Valerie Buhagiar), a rock 'n' roll roadie on the run with a fortune in cocaine. She claims the dead kid is her brother and pursuades Pokey to drive her and the body down to New Orleans for the family funeral. In reality she's stashed the coke down the throat of the corpse and has to smuggle it to her drug connection in the Big Easy. The pine coffin precariously perched atop his vintage Ford Galaxy, naive Pokey and hard-hearted Jackie set off down Highway 61 into America, "the Land of Kings" notes Pokey with deadpan sincerity in his postcards to a Guns 'n' Roses fan back home. The characters they encounter on the US side of the border run the gamut from threatening to very, very, very threatening. There's Watson (Peter Breck) a gun-toting lug obsessed with "good family music" and ruthlessly grooming his motherless brood of children for wholesome showbiz stardom; a mansionful of Jackie's has-been rocker friends, wasting away in dissolute, twilight existence--an environment straight out of the Eagles' "Hotel California"; but most of all there's a certain Mr. Skin (Earl Pastko). He's gaunt, malevolent, and happy to purchase the immortal soul of anyone who crosses his path. It seems the deceased boy had sold out to Mr. Skin (the price? a free concert ticket), and now the devil wants his due, pursuing the protagonists all the way down to New Orleans to get his claws on that cadaver. HIGHWAY 61 traverses the backroads of fame, fortune and tawdry ambition that compromise the American Dream, and while it takes a few strange detours, it's well the worth the trip. Handsomely mounted for $1.2 million, the film was inspired by the Bob Dylan song "Highway 61 Revisited" (the road passes through Dylan's hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, and in one scene Pokey plays homage to the house where the music legend grew up). Director Bruce McDonald is one of the rising stars of Canadian cinema, having made his feature debut in 1989 with the well-received ROADKILL, and like that film HIGHWAY 61 boasts a screenplay by actor Don McKellar, who makes his characters quirky, ideal traveling companions. A riff on New Orleans barber cum cornet player Buddy Bolden, Pokey Jones may be somewhat timid and slow to catch on but he's nobody's fool when it comes to standing down a rowdy biker gang (all it takes is a good haircut and a shave) or confronting Satan in his lair. Valerie Buhagiar looks and acts like a heavy metal Mona Lisa, whose smile may be genuine or just another deceit as she ends Pokey's virginity at gunpoint and leads the hapless Ontarian deeper into terra incognita. Punk rock star and monologist Jello Biafra, no stranger to legal hassles himself, has a juicy cameo as an uptight American border cop; the former Dead Kennedy's frontman barely contains the sarcasm in the finger-wagging antidrug warning he unloads at the two Canadians early on. The real scene-stealer, though, is Earl Pastko's Mr. Skin, a big-as-folklore embodiment of diabolical evil. It's a bit of a letdown, in fact, when Pokey tracks him down (in New Orleans everybody can point out where Satan lives) and finds that this Lucifer's roots are less than supernatural. He's just an elaborate wacko who lost his mind after the death of Elvis Presley. Still, he's got several walls filled with polaroids of those from whom he agreed to purchase souls--some for as little as $20 or a pint of bourbon. Now that's scary. Dedicated to a bluesman named Blind Boy Grunt, HIGHWAY 61 has a soundtrack with a peculiar skimming of rock, pop, jazz and gospel--everything from Tom Jones to the Ramones to Andre Crouch. The picture's exhibition covered less territory, unfortunately, receiving mainly film festival and art house exhibition in the US. (Violence, substance abuse, profanity, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations.)
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Powered by JustWatch. "Highway 61" opens up north in the Canadian hamlet of Pickerel Falls, where an earnest young man named Pokey Jones operates a barber shop and hangs out with his buddies. One day he discovers a frozen body in a bathtub out in the shop's backyard. He hauls the stiff into the shop and attempts to blow-dry him back to life ...
Highway 61: Directed by Bruce McDonald. With Valerie Buhagiar, Don McKellar, Earl Pastko, Peter Breck. A small-town barber goes on a road trip from Thunder Bay to New Orleans with an unpredictable woman and a coffin.
Highway 61, whose characters head south, has higher production values, better acting-and a real story. Full Review | Oct 15, 2019. Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews ...
Rated: 3/4 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Kathleen Maher Austin Chronicle Rated: 3.5/5 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Brian D. Johnson Maclean's Magazine Highway 61, whose characters head south, has higher ...
Highway 61 is a 1991 Canadian film directed by Bruce McDonald. The film is an unofficial sequel to his 1989 film Roadkill; although focusing on different characters, it centres on a road trip beginning in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where the road trip depicted in the earlier film ended.. The film premiered at the 1991 Festival of Festivals.
This is an awesome offbeat road movie. Small town barber find stiff in garden- become local celebrity- meets roadie allges stiff is her brother- hides drugs in said stiff- Convinces Barber to drive stiff from Canada to New Orleans-Lots of sex in graveyards-gun totin rockstars and homo biker gangs are met along the way.
A small-town barber goes on a road trip from Thunder Bay to New Orleans with an unpredictable woman and a coffin.
Check out the exclusive TV Guide movie review and see our movie rating for Highway 61
Reviews Highway 61 (Bruce McDonald, Canada, 1991) The […] Reviews. Highway 61 (Bruce McDonald, Canada, 1991) ... This Canadian effort is interchangeable with dozens of lazy, contrivedly cool road movies straining for cult appeal. Imagine a few drawling actors, a handful of catchy songs and plenty of shots of kitsch Americana as seen from a ...
Visit the movie page for 'Highway 61' on Moviefone. Discover the movie's synopsis, cast details and release date. Watch trailers, exclusive interviews, and movie review.
HIGHWAY 61 is a road movie geared for the midnight "alternative cinema" crowd, full of bizarre adventures, caricatures rather than characters, and fleeting views of the scenic armpits of America. Marginal skill (and a skewed vision) on the part of writer and director result in a freak-show atmosphere which is neither funny nor engaging.
All about Movie: directors and actors, reviews and ratings, movie facts, trailers, stills, backstage. A small-town barber goes on a road trip from Thu...
Highway 61 is an offbeat, comedic road movie about a small-town Canadian barber (Don McKellar) who finds a dead body. When a woman claiming to be the corpse's roadie sister (Valerie Buhagiar), arrives in town, he agrees to drive her and the body from Ontario to New Orleans, following Highway 61 over the entire journey.
Highway 61 1991, R, 102 min. Directed by Bruce McDonald. Starring Valerie Buhagiar, Don McKellar, Earl Pastko, Peter Breck, Art Bergmann. REVIEWED By Kathleen Maher ...
Buy Pixar movie tix to unlock Buy 2, Get 2 deal And bring the whole family to Inside Out 2; Save $10 on 4-film movie collection When you buy a ticket to Ordinary Angels; ... Highway 61 Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and ...
On Highway 61, the odd couple have sex in a cemetery and are followed by a nut job from Baton Rouge, someone who thinks the Devil (Earl Pastko). This weird character had the corpse before his demise sign a contract to give the Devil his soul when dead in exchange for the hockey stick factory worker receiving a free bus ticket.
Seeing movies made without heavy studio interference is refreshing, doubly so when they're as capable and self-assured as this one. Highway 61 is an easy-going movie, a David Lynch-lite experience with genial people, the occasional roadside attraction, and a soundtrack that will get the toes a-tapping. I had an unexpectedly good time with it.
Released April 24th, 1992, 'Highway 61' stars Valerie Buhagiar, Don McKellar, Earl Pastko, Peter Breck The R movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 43 min, and received a user score of 67 (out of 100 ...
Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records.Dylan continued the musical approach of his previous album Bringing It All Back Home (1965), using rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album in a further departure from his primarily acoustic folk sound, except for the closing track ...
Highway 61. Directed by: Bruce McDonald. Starring: Don McKellar, Valerie Buhagiar. Genres: Road Movie, Comedy, Toronto New Wave. Rated the #73 best film of 1991.
Highway 61 (1992) starring Valerie Buhagiar, Don McKellar, Earl Pastko and directed by Bruce McDonald.
Original movie reviews untainted by time! Home; Public Television Years. Opening Soon at a Theater Near You - 1975; ... A League of Their Own, Highway 61, The Adjuster, 1992 February 8, 2019 firstmagnitude 4930 Views 3 Comments 1992, A League of Their Own, Highway 61, Pinocchio, Swing Shift, The Adjuster, Unlawful Entry.