KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)

A noirish crime film with John Payne as an ex-con who's gone straight and makes his living delivering flowers. One morning, just after he's made a delivery, he gets caught up in the aftermath of an armored car heist because the crooks used a duplicate of his truck. He's picked up for questioning and eventually clears himself but goes on the trail of the gang for revenge. The gang members, brought together for this one robbery, all wear masks so they won't be tempted to pull any double crosses before they split the money a few weeks later in Mexico. The head honcho is Preston Foster, an ex-cop gone bad. Payne, in Mexico on his trail, falls for Foster's daughter (Coleen Gray). The other thugs are Jack Elam (quite young and not nearly as freakish looking as he was in later years), Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand. 40's starlet Dona Drake (ROAD TO MOROCCO) plays a Tijuana beauty stuck mostly in the background. There are a lot of fisticuffs and close-ups of sweaty faces. Payne, looking much older and craggier than just four years earlier in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, overacts a bit but Foster is quite good. Despite the title, very little of this takes place in Kansas City. [DVD]

THE GORILLA MAN (1943)

A Warners B-movie, and not one of their better ones. The title conjures up horror or sci-fi, but this is a straightforward spy story. It's set in England during the war; John Loder is a British soldier who is being kept in a hospital under observation for shell shock, but it turns out that Nazi spies are holding him prisoner to stop him from conveying important information to his superiors. The set up has promise, but the picture becomes drab and forgettable. With the weasly John Abbot as a Nazi and Ruth Ford as the romantic interest. Loder is his usual dependable second-string lead self, but for a better B-spy movie masquerading as a horror film with John Loder, see THE MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR. [TCM]