Product Details

• Actors: Vincent Price, Beulah Bondi, Ellen Drew
• Directors: Samuel Fuller
• Language: English
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0001GQGFG
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,622 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ignoble Royalty, October 10, 2010

By 

Tom Without Pity (A Major Midwestern Metropolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baron of Arizona (VHS Tape)

This is a review of THE BARON OF ARIZONA (1950) written and directed by Samuel Fuller. Vincent Price stars as master swindler James Reaves who spent years undercover forging and falsifyng documents with the primary goal of proving that he and his wife, played by Ellen Drew, were the owners of the territory, through Spanish land grants, that eventually became the state of Arizona in 1912.

THE BARON OF ARIZONA is a little slow and officious in spots but that may have been done deliberately just to ensure the audience that this is the real story. And this based on fact film is supposedly
very close to what happpened in a scam that started in the 1870s all the way to the early part of the Twentieth Century. Just for that fact alone,if it's actually true, I recommend this film and give it Four Stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Early Sam Fuller, with the James Reavis' scam much more interesting than Fuller's movie. Vincent Price is just fine., June 4, 2009

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Baron of Arizona (VHS Tape)

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.

The Baron of Arizona is one of three of Fuller's early films packaged by Criterion as its Ellipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller, The others are I Shot Jesse James and The Steel Helmet.

4.0 out of 5 stars SAMUEL FULLER, OPUS 2, April 10, 2008

By 

Daniel S. "Daniel" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baron of Arizona (VHS Tape)

***1/2 1950. Written and directed by Samuel Fuller. An office clerk imagines an unbelievable swindle, patiently forging proofs that his wife is the legal owner of Arizona. Vincent Price is imperial as a womanizer, monk, a gypsy and finally as the Baron of Arizona. The most impressive scene of the film is the scene of the lynching which already foreshadows the future masterpieces of Samuel Fuller. You can now buy the DVD of this film here Eclipse Series 5 - The First Films of Samuel Fuller (The Baron of Arizona / I Shot Jesse James / The Steel Helmet) (Criterion Collection). Recommended.