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.