Biography
Rex Carlton was a writer/producer whose career bounced between the stage and low-budget films shot in and around New York City during the late '40s and 1950s, before settling in Hollywood's exploitation backwaters during the 1960s. He first came to notice in movies during 1949, through his association with producer/director Joseph Lerner and a company called Laurel Films. Initially, Carlton partnered with Edmund L. Dorfmann in a co-production with Laurel Films called
Guilty Bystander (1949), an extraordinary film noir based on Wade Miller's book of the same name, and Carlton became the managing director at Laurel. Soon after, he and Lerner went into direct partnership in an attempt to finance what would have been a series of small New York-based stage productions, by pre-financing film adaptations of the proposed works. That fell through, however, and the last tangible element of Lerner and Carlton's work together was Mr. Universe (1951), a far less impressive movie than
Guilty Bystander. Carlton concentrated on attempts at stage production during the 1950s, including a play by Harry Young called Open House, to be directed by future
Andy Griffith (and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.) alumnus Coby Ruskin. He re-emerged late in the 1950s, attempting to raise money for a proposed film starring
Linda Christian -- whom he evidently had under contract -- to have been directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, which never got made. In 1959, he was the producer of
The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a low-budget horror movie shot just outside of New York City. Two years later, Carlton served as writer and producer of
The Devil's Hand, a horror film dealing with voodoo, and with a cast that included Christian,
Robert Alda, and one-time silent-era leading man
Neil Hamilton. After writing the screenplay for the science fiction-thriller
The Unearthly Stranger (1964), Carlton began an association with a new generation of low-budget Hollywood filmmakers, most notably director/producer
Al Adamson, for whom he wrote the screenplay for
Blood of Dracula's Castle (1967). The latter was a surprisingly complex and literate (if often tasteless, in the expected Adamson style) film within the low-budget horror milieu, but it ran into post-production legal problems that delayed its release. According to David Konow's book Schlock-O-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson, those around him suspected that Carlton was in serious financial debt to the wrong people, based on the fact that he apparently panicked visibly when the movie's release (in which he had a share of the profits) was delayed. While
Blood of Dracula's Castle languished in legal and distribution limbo, Carlton managed to get an executive producer's spot on the low-budget exploitation movie The Rebel Rousers, a film about motorcycle gangs that is notable today for the presence of
Jack Nicholson,
Cameron Mitchell,
Diane Ladd, and
Harry Dean Stanton in its cast; and he was involved in the early phases of production of another biker movie,
Hell's Bloody Devils, another
Al Adamson-directed film, starring
Broderick Crawford. Carlton's financial situation was worsening, however, and his production company, East-West International, was apparently in a hole from which he couldn't extricate it or himself. On May 6, 1968, Carlton shot himself in the head, leaving behind a suicide note that spoke of events going badly. His last official credit was for the screenplay of the horror film
Nightmare in Wax, which was released the year after his death. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide