Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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.

mark.waltz 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.

RanchoTuVu Vincent Price plays James Addison Reavis, a government clerk in a land office in Arizona, who tries to swindle his way to owning the entire territory through forged documents and an elaborate plan which is enlivened by another superb Price performance. He sets up his plan by establishing a false identity for young Sofia (who becomes beautiful Ellen Drew) which makes her the Baroness de Peralta, essentially the heiress to the whole Arizona Territory. Reavis returns to the Arizona Territory and implements his plan first by marrying her and then by evicting all the landowners. However, the plan unravels when the U.S. government starts to get on to his forgery. The film tells an historically interesting story of Price trying to reestablish the Spanish Empire in the Wild West.

MartinHafer 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!!