You must never take what is not yours, devious Vincent Price tells Hus young ward when she brings a book from his library on fraud for him to read to her, making her believe as a young girl that she is the heir to the American territory known as Arizona. While she grows up, he perfects his plan by living among an order of monks who guard priceless local artifacts. Great detail goes into his forgery to prove the claim, gaining their trust until he gets what he needs. Meeting his former ward years later, he charms her into marriage, leading to the take-over and one of the greatest robbery the wild west would ever know.This is one of Vincent Price's greatest non-horror performances, and next to "Dragonwyck" one of his best non-horror villains. Sitting in front of a giant map of Arizona, he has a profile equal to Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane", and as Price continues to gain power, he really becomes Citizen Arizona. Ellen Drew is simply just window dressing as the grown-up version of the naive ward. Excellent production values go into this Q budget drama from the independent Lippert which mainly made cheap crime dramas and westerns. Beaulah Bondi has a tiny role as the nanny Price hires to raise his ward, while Antonio Rosito (" Freaks") has a nice role as the dwarf in the gypsy tribe Price briefly hides out with. He's a villain with a conscience, and after a plea from Drew in an impressive dramatic plea, he finds himself reforming, but at what cost? A gripping climax has Price facing a hangman's rope, and the sweat falling off of Price's brow might have you clutching your seat or sweating a bit as well.

The first six minutes of The Baron of Arizona is a ponderous exposition about Arizona by a small group of dignified actors congratulating each other on Arizona's new statehood. They're in evening clothes, all white haired, all sipping brandy and all puffing on big cigars. Among them is one of the most stilted of voice-over narrators, Reed Hadley. It's a terrible start to what could have been an exceedingly clever movie. After Hadley gives us the secret of James Addison Reavis (Vincent Price), the screenwriter and director Sam Fuller moves us back from 1912 to 1872. Here, we meet Reavis at the start of his great scam to win the territory of Arizona for himself through forged Spanish land grant documents, self-created histories, great forgery skills, the placing of forged documents in a Spanish monastery, and the grooming of a little girl who he convinces her illiterate guardians is the heir to the phony Peralta land grant claim. All this fascinating cleverness, perpetuated with a fine, serious performance by Vincent Price, has the air bled from its balloon by Fuller's tell-us-the-con-early structure and by Hadley's mannered way with a narrative. Fuller and Hadley wind up giving us a voice-over narrative that does little more that tell us what we're already watching. As marred as the movie is, how does James Reavis' story hold up as the tale of a great ambitious con? Fuller brings us into the con by showing us the detailed preparations Reavis took before he made his move. Reavis spent years preparing his con, three of them as a monk in a monastery seeding the old archives with his forged documents. And of course, there is the manipulation of young Sophia, whom he has groomed and trained, and now intends to wed and bed...not because he loves her, but because she will inherit all of Arizona thanks to his plans. Naturally, now as a young woman she loves the guy. He loves the con and the riches to come. It's a nice setup. And when, 46 minutes into the movie, he and his wife show up in Phoenix with all the "documents" to claim title, all hell breaks loose. Our old friend Reed Hadley, now a young investigator from the Department of the Interior, is convinced it all is a scam. He intends to prove it. Does he succeed? Does James Reavis, now calling himself the Baron of Arizona, former clerk in the Sante Fe land office, become in the 1880s one of the wealthiest men in the world? In the year 2009, is the nation of Peralta- Reavis now a close ally of Mexico or of the United States? One thing Sam Fuller shows us: The native Arizonians have become violently restless. I don't want to give way any spoilers so I won't tell you if James Reavis succeeded with his scam and his heirs now control Arizona. Vincent Price and the Reavis scam is what the movie is all about. The scam's potential keeps us interested. Price makes Reavis a complicated and intriguing character who captures our interest and a good deal of our sympathy for his hard work. The movie, however, is flawed by its flashback structure, it's jumbled first 40 minutes, by some standard B movie acting and by Hadley's limitations as an actor and as a really irritating narrator. This was Fuller's second movie, a Poverty Row effort he shot in15 days. If the director had been a guy named Vic Mikle, would anyone care about it now? If you can get past this, Vincent Price's performance will probably make it worthwhile for you. When a role fit his style, his actorly mannerisms and his limitations, Price could be much better than the memory we have of him now as a deliberately hammy, good-natured specialist in cornball horror. Of those movies of his I've seen, I like him a good deal in this one and in Laura.

Although I am a US history teacher, I'd never heard about James Reavis and his claim to be the Baron of Arizonia (most of modern Arizona). So I was fascinated to see a film about this huckster who had the audacity to try to claim this huge chunk of territory as his own private land in the late 19th century. So fascinated that I did a bit of research on Reavis after I finished the movie.It seems that when the US got this land from Mexico, it promised to honor all existing land grants. Reavis, a talented forget and swindler, concocted a complicated scheme to take this land--a claim that ALMOST worked! The film stars Vincent Price in one of his earlier starring roles. While he'd been in Hollywood for about a decade, most of the time he was relegated to supporting roles. Here in THE BARON OF ARIZONA, he was clearly the star and the film benefited from his fine acting. However, you may be surprised to see Price acting a bit more like an action hero at times in the film, as he is much more macho than his usual persona--occasionally resorting to kicking the snot out of his enemies!The film was one of the earliest directorial efforts of the legendary Sam Fuller. While I didn't like how the story was fast and loose with the real facts of the case, Fuller must be commended for making such a professional looking film with only 15 days shooting!! Usually such a quickly made film would be a cheap horror film along the lines of an Ed Wood movie, but this one has all the polish of an A-picture.As for the plot, despite the facts that so much of the script is wrong, it still is a very captivating movie and at least it captures the essence of who Reavis was--even though the details are more than a little wrong. This playing fast and loose with details is fairly common in Hollywood films of the era, so I don't hold this against the film that much.Overall, the film is fascinating, tough to stop watching and a quality production throughout most of the film. However, despite Fuller's reputation for not being a sentimentalist, the last 15 minutes of the film are indeed heavy on sentiment and actually is about the worst part of the film. Plus, in reality Reavis only got a 2 year sentence (not 6) and his wife did indeed leave him--and the way the film ended and how he was caught is pure fiction.For a much more correct version of the real case, see http://jeff.scott.tripod.com/baron.html . It has a link to a very exhaustive site by Michael Marinacci. Oddly, the true facts of the case are in many ways much more interesting than this film!!

Vincent Price is so well-known for his role in horror films that his appearance in other kinds of film is mostly forgotten. This is one of the films that illustrates he had far more range than he's often credited for.Likewise, Lippert Films is mostly known for a lot of quickie-cheapy kinds of films; this is a quality exception, even much ahead of its time as a crime caper film.I saw the film when it was first released, and although I was rather young at the time, the story stayed with me for decades. I finally located a copy on a VHS taped, and snapped it up. The film still works, and I'm viewing it from a far different perspective.That the story is mostly based on historic fact is interesting, but like many caper films, what really catches the viewer's interest is the setup of the caper, with all the research, painstaking care, and the like that goes into a committing a brilliant crime. James Reavis was an incredible con man, and watching him set up each forgery is extremely interesting. Effectively, for a brief time, he effectively stole the whole state of Arizona.(Major Spoiler) What's really nice about the film is that the change in Reavis' character is believable, showing that even the most cold-blooded plan can be warmed by affection. That's even reflected as he teeters on the brink of being hanged: his "defense" is that if he's killed, the lynchers would be cheated out of their lands; i.e., that killing him will validate his forgeries! A very memorable film, rather obscure, and highly recommended.