DVD review: 1952 thriller ‘Kansas City Confidential' is back with a vengeance

Reportedly the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” this low-budget programmer features Payne as ex-con Joe Rolfe, a florist’s deliveryman who is set up as an unwitting decoy and framed for a million-dollar armored car robbery engineered by a bitter ex-cop (Preston Foster). Arrested while the real robbers get away clean, Rolfe takes a brutal beating from interrogating detectives before he’s turned loose for lack of evidence.

Fired from his job due to the bad publicity, Rolfe learns from underworld sources that at least one of the heisters is hiding out in Tijuana, Mexico. It’s there that he finds chain-smoking, habitual crapshooter Pete Harris (a convincingly nerve-wracked Jack Elam), and learns that Harris has been summoned to a Mexican fishing resort to meet with his three accomplices and split the loot. It’s there that Rolfe faces off with womanizing dandy Tony Romano and bubblegum-chewing Boyd Kane (respectively, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand at their menacing best), the ex-cop mastermind, and just to complicate things, the ex-cop’s innocent daughter (Coleen Gray), who blunders into the mess and causes her crooked father to become painfully conflicted while Rolfe falls in love — perhaps to his detriment.