Elvis Presley cruises through Roustabout like a predatory shark. As Charlie Rogers, a nightclub singer who loses his gig and ends up working as a carnival “roustabout,” or laborer, he spends his first day on the job doing little more than flirting with or even forcibly kissing every woman he sees. Thank goodness for Barbara Stanwyck, in a late-career performance as the carnival owner. She may not call Charlie on his bad behavior, but at least she’s a female figure who is something other than a target (she also knows how to deliver her lines with a conviction that makes Elvis look more lost than usual). The songs don’t offer much distraction from the silly story. In something like Blue Hawaii, only three years earlier, the music and movement seemed to burst from Elvis involuntarily—as if he was possessed by it—but here things appear more calculated, to the point that hints of self-parody begin to creep in. And yet even though we learn early on that Charlie knows karate, he doesn’t get to display that talent nearly enough for Roustabout to qualify as enjoyable camp.
