ELVIS: ROUSTABOUT!(1964):
Elvis trying to be someone he's not again! He
plays his favorite role as an asshole!! But really
the movie is not too bad, surprisingly! Probably
because of the supporting cast: Barbara Stanwyck
is very good here, as is Joan Freeman as the
love interest!
For those of you who don't know, and want to,
the term "roustabout" refers to someone in a
carnival that basically does everything! Mostly
helping to set up and break down the carnival!
This does have several of my favorites in it,
including the great Teri Garr(who was also
in Viva Las Vegas, she was also in the Star Trek
TOS episode Assignment: Earth), Richard Kiel
(who first gained fame in the James Bond
movies as Jaws, and later in the TV series
The Wild Wild West as Loveless' cohort in crime
Voltaire) in a very small role, Billy Barty(the
midget who was in many, MANY movies and
TV series', including Peter Gunn and Circus
Boy in the 50's), and Raquel Welch! B-
From another reviewer at Amazon:
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