Stars: Elvis Presley, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Freeman, Leif Erickson, Sue Anne Langdon, Raquel Welch, Joan Staley, Pat Buttram

Director: John Rich

Summary: Elvis plays a karate using biker working as a roustabout at a carnival.

In ROUSTABOUT, Elvis plays Charlie Rogers, a carefree, leather-clad biker who joins the carnival of Maggie Morgan (Barbara Stanwyck). There he finds hard work, romance, and a job as a tent crooner. Inevitably, he attracts the attention of a sleazy rival. Raquel Welch makes her screen debut in a bit part as a college girl. The film includes the songs "Hard Knocks," "One Track Heart," "It's a Wonderful World," and more.

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The Elvis formula was well in place by the time of 1964's Roustabout, a concoction of undistinguished songs (anyone remember "Poison Ivy League"?), pretty girls, tight pants, a colourful setting and a little bit of karate to prove that Elvis really had been studying his martial arts. With that understood, Roustaboutis a better-than-average work-out 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 Roustabouton tape. --Robert Horton

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1964
Release Date:	March 18, 2002
Runtime:	95 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 8142
Keywords:	Music, Films, Elvis, Shows, Roustabout, Performing, Musicals, Arts
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts