Out of the Past by Barry Gifford

Author:Barry Gifford
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2000-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Kansas City Confidential

1952. Directed by Phil Karlson. Starring Preston Foster, John Payne, Colleen Gray, Donna Drake, Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand.

A good lowdown drama on a par with director Karlson’s 1955 exposé docudrama The Phenix City Story. But K.C. has a more developed story line than Phenix City, a more exotic setting (Mexico), and a super noir group of actors, especially Brand, Van Cleef, and Elam. The story is pretty slick: three ex-cons, wearing masks to disguise themselves from each other as well as the citizens, pull off an armored car robbery and make their getaway in a truck identical to the one that delivers flowers on a daily basis to a store next to the bank where the hit is made. The three robbers have been brought together by a former K.C. police captain who’s blackmailing each of them, and who’s been forcibly retired on a small pension. Each mug has made his way separately and each escapes separately, eventually meeting up in Barados, Mexico, an out-of-the-way resort town, to split up the cash.

John Payne is the real delivery truck driver and he gets hauled in as a suspect, but is soon released for lack of evidence. He’s treated brutally, however, and goes after the robbers. He finds Jack Elam in Tijuana, and when Elam is killed by Mexican cops, Payne assumes his identity. He’s already beaten information out of Elam about the robbers’ rendezvous, so he hightails it to Barados on Elam’s ticket. There are some heavy shadow shots of Elam and Payne as they cat and mouse it around Tijuana, in a gambling joint and on the seedy streets and in a hotel room. This is top-notch noir-ville. Karlson even manages to make the usually happy-faced Payne look sinister. In Barados, Payne encounters the other two thieves, Brand and Van Cleef—evil-looking customers—and Payne passes himself off as Elam. Preston Foster is the former K.C. cop who really wants to show up the K.C. force by turning the robbers in and collecting an insurance reward. Foster is pissed off that he’s been mustered out of the police ranks, so he’s worked out this elaborate scheme as his revenge. What he didn’t count on was Payne running them down.

Foster passes himself off in Barados as a tourist fisherman, familiar with the country from previous holidays spent down there. His daughter, played by Colleen Gray, shows up unexpectedly, however, and she and Payne fall for each other. Van Cleef is appropriately weasel-like as he plays sleazy-squeezy with the local hotel vamp, Donna Drake, who does a great Lupe Velez prickteasing chiquita routine. Neville Brand is his usual pockmarked no-nonsense heavy. When the cops arrive, the two robbers are shot down and Foster buys it, too. Payne doesn’t let on to Foster’s daughter that Foster was the mastermind, preferring to let her think her father was a hero who helped do in the thugs, giving him a clean slate in K.C.

George Diskant’s powdery black and white photography traces

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