Product Description

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/21/2007

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12933 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2000-05-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The Elvis formula was well in place by the time of 1964's Roustabout: a passel of undistinguished songs (anyone remember "Poison Ivy League"?), pretty girls, tight pants, a colorful setting, and a little bit of karate to prove that Elvis really had been studying his martial arts. With that understood, Roustabout is a better-than-average workout for the King--not as peppy as Viva Las Vegas, but a good deal livelier than the sleepwalking It Happened at the World's Fair. Elvis plays a bad-boy singer roaming the highways on his Japanese motorcycle; laid up after an accident, he joins a carnival owned by the feisty Barbara Stanwyck. ("This is not a circus, it's a carnival. There's a big difference.") The cast goes from high to low: both giant-sized future James Bond villain Richard Kiel and tiny Billy Barty are carny regulars, and Raquel Welch has a small role in the opening scene. Teri Garr is one of the carnival dancers behind Elvis. The legendary costume designer Edith Head puts Elvis in a series of snappy windbreakers, but thank goodness he's also in black leather a lot. As if that weren't enough to recommend it, the movie has a sequence involving Elvis riding a cycle inside the "Wall of Death," a huge wooden cylinder with high walls. This bit actually inspired an entire Irish film in 1986, Eat the Peach, in which friends build a similar contraption after they watch Roustabout on tape. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

A Lot of fun with Elvis and Stanwyck!
In one of his best movies, Elvis Presley plays a handsome, bonafide jerk who, on route to his next job, accidentally encounters Barbara Stanwyck, her even jerkier husband, and her beautiful step-daughter (Joan Freeman). Maggie (Stanwyck) decides to let Elvis become her dying carnival's roustabout, but he does more. When Elvis sings, well, you know what happens! The carnival begins to attract attention and the money starts rolling in. But when Elvis is offered a bigger salary by another carnie, he is torn between the prospects of a better life and his loyalty to Stanwyck, and particularly, her step-daughter. Every song in the film is "a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful" experience. Elvis's fun rockin' with "Poision Ivy League" to his romantic wooing of Freeman in a ferris wheel, to the upbeat "It's Carnival Time" the big production number, "Little Egypt", and the final, memorable number, "And The Whole World's Gonna Be Mine". And Stanwyck is just great as the good-hearted carnie whom Elvis learns to trust. You'll have fun with this movie or buy it for the Elvis fan in your family... "be a big shot for a dollar, it's Carnival Time!"

I went and bought myself a ticket...
Although rather formulaic, Roustabout is one of Elvis' better outings. I really love this film. I have to disagree with the reviewer who thinks the songs were forgettable. I found them quite memorable and witty. Example: Poison Ivy League, boys in that Ivy League, give me an itch -- those "sons of the rich." Granted, the song needs to be understood within the context of the movie, but for a 1964 Elvis film that's rather tongue in cheek! Roustabout -- "I'm just a Roustabout, drifting from town to town, no job can hold me down..." It's a great number that really introduces us to Elvis' free-wheeling character (a set up for the movie plot) And of course who can forget "Little Eva." Little Eva came out struttin wearin nuttin but a button and bow... It's an early popular 50s tune that meshed within the Carny atmosphere of the film. And even It's Carnival Time although very simplistic is a catchy little tune. Stanwyck is great and so is Leif Ericson, playing a doubting dolting father-type, although I just don't know how Elvis can punch him out one minute and then suddenly they're pals the next (but that's formula). Look it's fun, the tunes are peppy, he gets the girl what more can you get outta of an Elvis 60s movie!

Poison Ivy League.
This Elvis flick leans to the dramatic. Not great drama, mind you, but more serious than the usual EP Grade B frolic. By 1964, Elvis was getting too old to be convincing as an "angry young man," but he gave it his best shot. Elvis is the motorbike-riding rebel whose singing peps up business at a struggling carnival. Elvis clashes with the hard-drinking ramrod, Joe (Leif Erickson). Joan Freeman and Elvis moon around each other, but find romance a rocky road. Movie veteran Barbara Stanwyck lends stature to the film as the carnival owner. The song writing teams of Giant-Baum-Kaye and Leiber-Stoller wrote some of the music, but the results are only mixed. On the plus side, the ballad "Big Love, Big Heartache" and the comic "Little Egypt" number are worth the effort of viewing. The other music is less memorable. One amusing footnote is Pat Buttram as a rival carnival owner. This was shortly before he enjoyed popular recogniton as Mr. Haney on TV's "Green Acres." Given the movie's emphasis on the social mores of carnival folks, we wonder if Col. Tom Parker was in hog heaven, considering his carny background. The movie offers good Hal Wallis production values. Wallis once asserted he made flicks like this one to raise money for serious films like "Becket." He considered Elvis trivial but profitable. Elvis fans will be pleased with this movie, regardless. Sample the cotton candy fluff. ;-)