The Baron of Arizona (1950)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Memorable, crazy movie

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

***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.

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 fact that this is based on a true story makes this the most outrageous plot ever filmed. Vincent Price plays the biggest con man in US History prior to the 20th Century. The ending of the movie is Hollywoodized but amazingly the rest of the story is true.A man named Reavis who worked in a government land office devised a complicated scheme to forge documents here and in Spain to develop a way to claim the entire state of Arizona as his own with a young girl he develops into a Baroness and marries in order to make his claim legitimate. It is hard to believe this really happened.In this movie the United States is actually put on trial as a Defendant having to prove Reavis does not own Arizona. This movie was made on a low budget with some quality film making people behind the camera and great work by Price. The story cries for a remake although I would be frightened who would be chosen for Price's role. If it were remade with the real true ending of the story, it would be a strong movie. Reavis only problem here is he set his sights too high. At one point the US Government offers him $25 Million Dollars to drop his claim. Considering this is the 1800's Reavis should have taken the offer. Instead he is tripped up by a dogged government expert that finally proves his scheme.Too me there is a real chance for a great remake of the movie.Still having this one with Price carrying the film is a pleasure that is easy to endure.

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.