Later noted as a film noir specialist, Karlson directed 99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential and Hell's Island, all with actor John Payne, in the early 1950s.
He worked as assistant director on Destry Rides Again (1932) and My Pal, the King with Tom Mix; The Countess of Monte Cristo (1934) and Cheating Cheaters (1934) with Fay Wray; I Like It That Way (1934); Romance in the Rain (1934); and Strange Wives (1934), directed by Richard Thorpe.
[6] He went back to Universal where he worked as an assistant on The Black Doll (1938); The Case of the Missing Blonde (1938); The Last Express (1938); His Exciting Night (1938), The Last Warning (1938), Newsboys' Home (1938), and Society Smugglers (1939), directed by Joe May.
He used light and shadow to add mood to ordinary dialogue scenes, and employed careful camera angles to maximize the size of the limited sets.
Karlson's resourcefulness made him Monogram's choice to launch a new series (The Bowery Boys, The Shadow) or invigorate an existing one (Charlie Chan).
An excellent example is Karlson's Charlie Chan mystery The Shanghai Cobra (1945) in which the director, given a small exterior set, established a film noir atmosphere by shooting the scene at night during a rainstorm.
British production company Eagle-Lion Films hired Karlson to direct The Big Cat (1949), which he later described as his answer to The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
Small liked Karlson's work and used him on Lorna Doone (1951), an adaptation of the famous novel with Richard Greene, and The Texas Rangers (1951), a Western with Montgomery.
[5] Karlson bounced back with two films for Edward Small starring John Payne that were released through United Artists: Kansas City Confidential (1952) and 99 River Street (1953).
After making Hell's Island (1955) with John Payne for Paramount Pictures, he did 5 Against the House (1955), a heist movie at Columbia, which gave Kim Novak one of her first roles.
Karlson returned to Monogram (now known as Allied Artists) to make The Phenix City Story (1955), based on the murder of Albert Patterson.
Desi Arnaz hired Karlson to direct the pilot for the TV series The Untouchables (1959), later released theatrically as The Scarface Mob.
[5] Karlson was Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman's first choice to direct their first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), but they were forced to decline him after he asked for too high of a salary.
He made a melodrama, The Young Doctors (1961);[11] an Elvis Presley film, Kid Galahad (1962); and Rampage (1963), an adventure story with Robert Mitchum.
He directed the pilot for a TV series about Alexander the Great with William Shatner that was not picked up and did uncredited work on Ride the Wild Surf (1964).
He had a huge success in 1973 with Walking Tall, the fact-based story of a crusading sheriff Buford Pusser in the most corrupt county in Tennessee.
In Karlson's best films, a truly bleak vision of American society is readily apparent; a world where everything is for sale, where no one can be trusted, where all authority is corrupt, and honest men and women have no one to turn to but themselves if they want any measure of justice.