Product Details

• Actors: Elvis Presley, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Freeman, Leif Erickson, Sue Ane Langdon
• Directors: John Rich
• Writers: Allan Weiss, Anthony Lawrence
• Producers: Hal B. Wallis, Joseph H. Hazen, Paul Nathan
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Paramount Home Video
• DVD Release Date: May 2, 2000
• Run Time: 101 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305837848
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,480 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Roustabout" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lot of fun with Elvis and Stanwyck!, May 18, 2000

By 

Sean Orlosky (Yorktown, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roustabout [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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!"

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poison Ivy League., January 8, 2002

By 

Robert S. Clay Jr. (St. Louis, MO., USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roustabout [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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. ;-)

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of John Rich's Best Films, November 15, 2004

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roustabout (DVD)

John Rich later became a TV titan and directed many of the best episodes of the best TV series, as well as taking a hand at production. But his feature film career is even more interesting. Like many journeyman directors, he was assigned a brace of Elvis pictures--this one and the later, hippie-themed EASY COME, EASY GO. But he was also responsible for some of the most under-rated programmers of the 1960s, including THE NEW INTERNS and BOEING BOEING--and WIVES AND LOVERS as well. In ROUSTABOUT he demonstrates a flair for working with actors of all stripes, from the legendary Golden Age star represented here by Barbara Stanwyck, to the neophyte starlet--in ROUSTABOUT there are plenty of them, and the most sparkling is a very young Raquel Welch, who makes her film debut in the opening scene as a college coed mesmerized by Elvis' singing. Raquel looks great and seems quite believable. It's no wonder her fi;lm career soared after making this film. As Elvis' leading lady, Joan Freeman is pretty good, and for this we can thank John Rich, he brings out colors in her otherwise cut and paste performance that we would not see again in Ms. Freeman's acting until her amusing later turn as "Ellie Jackson" in the Don Knotts goof-fest THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT.

As for Barbara Stanwyck, what can you say? She's great in the part and, even though at the time people say she was slumming by taking a supporting role in an Elvis picture, in hindsight she was pretty wise, for she was able to keep her name above the title and in Hollywood, that's all that matters. She was one star who was able to keep working until the day she died. As Maggie in ROUSTABOUT she adds new luster to the word, "Termagant." She's bitter, she's fiery, she's curt, she's passionate and she's salty. She's seen it all and laid down the law to bigger men than Elvis. And yet at the end of the day, when all is said and done, she needs him to maintain her autonomy over her grand little carnival. The two of them strike sparks together and their scenes have some of the resonance, at any rate, that Elvis brought to scenes with older women who reminded him of Gladys, his own late mother whom he adored.