evanston_dad "The Baron of Arizona" was Samuel Fuller's second film after the forgettable "I Shot Jesse James" from 1949. While it's no masterpiece and nowhere nearly as good as the films Fuller would make when he really hit his stride as a filmmaker, it shows marked improvement over his first movie.Fuller as a director was never much interested in following genre conventions even when making genre films, which is one of my favorite things about him. That quality begins to emerge in "The Baron of Arizona," in which Fuller is much more interested in the idiosyncrasies of this based-on-actual-events drama than he is in making his audience happy. I agree with another reviewer that he himself seems bored by the love story, and those scenes seem to only exist because Fuller knew his audience expected them to. The movie is at its best when it's following the details of the devious plot masterminded by a deliciously villainous Vincent Price, who seems perfectly at home with the role when he's asked to be a conniver but not so much when called upon to be a tough guy. The film is visually more interesting than Fuller's first, as if he figured out what to do with his camera or was given more money to do it. Indeed, while this isn't a big-budget film by any stretch of the imagination, it does have better production values than "I Shot Jesse James," released by the same studio.Both "Jesse James" and "Baron" are worth your time if you are a Samuel Fuller fan, because they give us a peek at Fuller as an emerging artist. But only "Baron" is worth watching for general film fans. It's not a great movie, but there are things to enjoy.Grade: B

SanteeFats Going outside his normal genres of horror and fantasy/science fiction Vincent Price is very good as he plays a man who takes years and years to prefect a plan to fake a Spanish land grant for what amounts to all of the Arizona Territory. He finds a one year old girl who he believes is an orphan. It turns out towards the end of the film that she never was. He spends three years plus in a Spanish monastery learning how to write and therefore forge the documents he needs and also be able to alter the grant page on file there. Meanwhile he is having the girl trained as the Baroness. When things are finally in place he marries the girl, produces his papers, and tries to claim the territory. The US government investigates over many months finally getting the evidence to prove the scam. In an ironic twist Price has already fessed up as he learns the girl is really in love with him. He gets a jail term, gets released and she is there waiting when he gets out. Interestingly enough this was based on an actual event.

skallisjr 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.

MisterWhiplash The Baron of Arizona is another of Samuel Fuller's early "apprentice" type of films, where he was quickly learning his craft and becoming a master of the "B-movie". Following a superb debut and right before his first great film, he had a little downtime to cook up a film that I can't be sure either way how true or how fictional it is (then again, if it's Fuller, as he would claim, it's ALL true in the stuff he bases on the facts as an ex crackerjack reporter). Whichever way to look at it, the Baron of Arizona works up to a point as historical melodrama, but had Fuller done this kind of material later on in his career, it might have been a much better film, maybe more satirical or hard-edged with some comedic overtones. There's more craftiness than is to be had with a pot-boiler like this: Vincent Price playing a con-man who somehow thinks up a fake family heritage to place on a young abandoned girl and then spends years in a Spanish monastery in order to make up and sign some documents that would have him as the rightfully owner of all the land in Arizona.Sounds great, and for the first half or so there's a lot of cool tension as the "Baron" keeps going through his self-fulfilling motions to get what he wants; Price is totally brilliant in the part (until Fuller's script starts to go soft in the last act), with all of his little eye gestures and slight physical and vocal intonations adding just the right notes for a devilish, charming crook like the Baron. The problem comes though in unfolding the trouble the Baron gets into with the government, a nosey man from the department of the interior. There could be a romantic angle to be had in a story like this, but I'm not sure Fuller went about it totally the right way - maybe or maybe not it would be true, there would be more honesty to the tale, in a sense, had the Baron not revealed anything, even at his wife's befuddlement over how so many people could call him a fraud. It is charming, as they fall in love over the course of the damnedest proceedings. But at the same time it also felt a little too sentimental, too much dipping into the easy, predictable route that Fuller often skewers just a little or finds in another angle.Out of the three films that have been recently re-released by the Criterion collection's Eclipse series, this would probably be the least one on the list to recommend. That being said, it's still a pretty decent picture, with some good supporting work, including from the Baronesses's step-father, and of course for Price fans it might serve as something of a small treasure of a performance outside of his usual horror oeuvre.