Fred Rexer

Fred L. Rexer, Jr. is a U.S. Army Vietnam combat veteran and Hollywood actor and screenwriter. He is best known as the military advisor for Apocalypse Now and as Spiritual Advisor for Conan the Barbarian. (Rexor, the Ben Davidson character in Conan, was named after Fred.) In the opening scenes of Red Dawn, he played the paratroop commander, and later the knife-wielding Russian tank commander gunned down at the service station. Fred Rexer has contributed numerous passages to the screenplay of that film and other films written or directed by John Milius and Walter Hill. Milius has named Rexer as the real-life prototype of Captain Willard, the protagonist of Apocalypse Now. (See Peter Cowie, The Apocalypse Now Book, Da Capo Press, 2001.) Fred Rexer was a federally licensed machine gun dealer, holding a class III license from the ATF (of the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury at the time), selling items listed under the National Firearms Act of 1934, from his Texas business, and he engaged in that business through at least through the 1970s.

Publications
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., Machine Guns: Silencers and Counterinsurgency Weapons, Illustrated Catalogs & Reference Guides Nos. 1, 2, and 3, Houston, TX, 1974
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., Submachine Guns, Calibre 9mm & .45 ACP, Ingram M10 , Houston, TX: Anubis Press, 1977
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., Dead or Alive: A Textbook on Self-Defense with the .45 Automatic, Houston, TX: IDHAC Publishing, 1977
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., Brass Knuckle Bible: A Manual of Concealed Weapons, Shreveport, LA: Delta Press, 1978
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., Bridge City, Shreveport, LA: Delta Press, 1978
  • Fred L. Rexer, Jr., U.S.A. The Urban Survival Arsenal, Shreveport, LA: Delta Press, 1980
  • Richard Dobbins, Evan Slawson, Deric Washburn, and Harry Kleiner (screenplay); John Milius, Fred Rexer (story), Extreme Prejudice, Pocket Books, New York NY, 1987, (ISBN 0-671-64016-X)
  • Fred Rexer at IMDb
  • A personal tribute to Fred Rexer, explaining and quoting his tactical and cinematic contributions
  • Gunship Mission by John A. Cash in Seven Firefights in Vietnam, Office of the Chief of Military History - an account that illustrates some of the methods used by the gunship fire teams, featuring Fred Rexer


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