kapelusznik18 ***Minor Spoilers***Samuel "Sam" Fuller's second directed film after "I Shot Jesse James" tells the true story of con artist and womanizing creep James Reavis played by Vincent Price who uses this little Mexican peasant girl Sofia, Keren Kester & later Ellen Drew, in a plan to get control of the US territory of Arizona by claiming that it was given to her ancestors back in 1748 by the king of Spain. After spending years going to Spain and forging the official papers, or land grants, to prove Sofia's legal claims to the Arizona territory Reavis come back to the US and married the now grown up and sexy looking Sofia to become the sole owner of the future state of Arizona: All 113,990 square miles of it! It's US Government official- for the Department of the Interior- James Griff, Reed Hadley, who smells a rat in all this and plans to expose Reavis' attempt to swindle the government as well as tens of thousands of Arizonans out of their land. That ends up with Reavis together with Sophia running for their lives in trying to avoid a neck tie party being thrown for them when they show up to notarize their claims at the state government office.Were told all this to a state of local board of directors by US Government official Griff at the very beginning of the movie. While their smoking Havana cigars and drinking brandy who were in fact victimized by Reavis but had since gained great respect for him in what he did to pay for his many crimes. As rotten as Reavis was and what he was facing,a rope round his neck, his ace in the hole-That saved his miserable life- was that if he's killed by the outraged Arizonans everything he took from them will be gone in him not facing trail and admitting to his guilt.Having lived high off the hog, as well as the fat of the land, for some 10 years now a broke an beaten man Reavis was to spent 10 years behind bars knowing that he got the best deal he can get from the US Government, as well as his fellow Arizonans, compared to what he did to it. In the end a free man but without as much as a pot to p*** in Reavis is met by his loving wife Sofia as well as her adopted father Pepito,Vladimir Sokoloff, and former governess Loma, Beulah Bondi,outside the prison gates to welcome him back to freedom as well as getting a new start in life. The film made James Reavis look a lot more likable then he really was due to the great acting of Vincent Price not the fact that in real life he his actions were really to enrich himself at the expense of others whom- like Sophia Pepito & Loma-he lead into a life of crime & deceit without them even knowing about it.

st-shot In one of the boldest land grabs in US history Confederate vet Samuel Reavis through energetic and ambitious duplicity managed to claim and convince the government and the land's occupants that Arizona Territory belonged to him through his wife by way of recognized Spanish decree who supposedly deeded the rights to her family. In the Baron of Arizona Sam Fuller does an effective job of briskly and clearly detailing the convoluted and exhausting efforts of Reavis but his threadbare production values and awkward handling of tension inducing moments fails to do the audacious act itself justice and the film fails to ignite.After his quirky directorial debut in I Shot Jesse James Fuller follows up with another offbeat Western legend in Reavis and while Vincent Price has the sinister chops and countenance to smugly bamboozle those that need to be he fails abjectly when called on to wield weapon or punch it out with the locals. In a sloppily edited climax, Price with a rope does save his best for last but the film's solid story begs ( and deserves) a bigger budget with more of a two fisted huckster (Douglas or Lancaster) in the lead displaying more energy and guile, less contempt and condescension.

utgard14 Vincent Price plays real-life swindler and forger James Reavis, who cooks up a scheme to steal the territory of Arizona. The true story of this man is pretty interesting. Obviously, as is always the case with movies based on real events, some facts have been altered for dramatic purposes. It's not a bad little movie. There are some dull stretches but Vincent Price's performance is good enough to keep your interest throughout. He is really the whole show. The support is fine but nobody's quite on the level of Price. Ellen Drew is pretty but miscast. Nice direction from Sam Fuller. Certainly worth a look, especially for Price and Fuller fans, but it doesn't have much repeat value for me.

OldAle1 Only slightly less impressive than Fuller's debut is this, his second film, with an excellent and slightly restrained Vincent Price as the eponymous title character, another true-life minor figure in the history of the Old West: James Addison Reavis, who in the 1880s concocted a grand schemed to defraud the United States of a large chunk of the then-territory of Arizona through forged documents showing a Spanish land grant handed down for a century and a half to the woman he was to make his bride. Price's conviction and Fuller's straightforward direction somehow make this preposterous tale ring true (many of the basics are correct, though Fuller certainly over-dramatizes the later confrontations between Reavis and the government with its allies the homesteaders that the Baron is trying to steal from). Like I Shot Jesse James this is ultimately a tale of redemption, as the Baron, like Bob Ford, comes to understand that it is not riches and titles that make him attractive to his "Baroness" Sofia (Ellen Drew) but his character. Unlike Bob Ford, he is a man capable of learning and profiting from past mistakes.The narration, from a clubby smoking-room, seems superfluous but fits in with Fuller's "this happened, and you are there" aims. The film does drag a bit in the last third or so, and the great character actress Beulah Bondi is essentially wasted in a small role as Sofia's tutor, but Price carries the film, and the last shot, reminiscent to me of the last moments of 'The Lives of Others' carries a powerful emotional punch. Watched on the fine Eclipse DVD.