“I am the baron, and what goes with the barony must and will be recognized by all of you.”

Sitting Duck’s rating: 5 out of 10 fraudulent land grants

Sitting Duck’s review: When the average person envisions crime in the Wild West, the first thing that comes to mind is the flashy heists of banks, trains, and stagecoaches. But fraud was also an issue. Such schemes ranged from card sharks hustling suckers into a “friendly” game of poker to shysters peddling snake oil concoctions (often spiked with laudanum) that were useless at best and hazardous at worst.

However, these scams are pennyante compared to what real life forger James Reavis pulled off.

By laying out an extensive paper trail, Reavis was able to con the U.S. government in believing that he owned the bulk of Arizona Territory. This gave him the exclusive ownership of all mineral rights, grazing lands, and railroad rights of way. What’s more, the settlers were now considered freeloading squatters unless they immediately forked over rent. It was a sweet racket, and he would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids and their dog.

Actually, it was all his fault, as Reavis insisted on being a colossal jerk over being the self-titled Baron of Arizona. This encouraged the government to hire specialists to examine the documentation that backed his claim. To trained eyes, these papers were obvious forgeries, and it wasn’t long before Reavis found himself wearing striped pajamas and pounding rocks into gravel.

It was a bizarre incident in the annals of the Wild West. Naturally it has been excluded from grade school history books on grounds of being insufficiently boring. So it was up to Hollywood (with its mixed track record on dramatizing historical events) to take up the slack that the American Education Establishment refused to handle.

What may surprise some of you is that the producer who tackled it was Robert L. Lippert. You may recognize the name from his having produced six films screened on MST3K. But before he got into rocketships and lost continents and radar cops, his preferred genre was the Western. As a businessman interested in getting movies for his independent theater chain and hinders into those seats, Westerns were a safe bet. Not only were they hugely popular at the time, but they were also inexpensive to produce thanks to a network of film ranches that served as permanent sets to be used for any number of horse operas. Because when you’ve seen one frontier town, you’ve seen them all. With rookie director/writer Sam Fuller having proven his mettle with I Shot Jesse James, Lippert was willing to let him have a go at presenting the rise and fall of James Reavis.

It is a Dark and Stormy Night (no, really) when land office clerk James Reavis (Vincent Price) arrives at home of Pepito Alvarez (Vladimir Sokoloff). Reavis informs Alvarez that the mestiza orphan Sophia (Karen Kester) who is in his care is in fact the lost heiress of the Peraltas. According to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the U.S. government is required to honor any prior land grants made by the Spanish and Mexican governments in the territory that was ceded to America at the end of the Mexican-American War. Reavis explains how he came across documents showing that she is a direct descendant of Don Miguel Peralta, who made his claim of Arizona back in 1750. All that’s needed is to obtain further documentation, in particular the Royal Court decrees in Spain that made the land grant official. Until then, Reavis hires a governess (Beulah Bondi) to provide Sophia with an education befitting her future status.

On the off chance you chose to skip directly to the plot summary, Reavis’ story is complete hogwash. While the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo does offer such terms, there was never a Don Miguel Peralta. But Reavis is hard at work establishing a paper trail saying that there was so. He’s so dedicated to pulling off this scam that he spends three years infiltrating a Spanish monastery where Royal Court records are stored. Once his work is complete, he meets up again with Alvarez and the now of consenting age Sofia (Ellen Drew). Reavis proposes marriage to her, and she readily accepts. Exactly as planned.

I’m afraid you’ll have to provide your own barf bag.

With his phony baloney baroness in tow, Reavis arrives at the office of Surveyor General Miller (Edward Keane) and presents his claim. To Miller’s horror, the story checks out with all the paperwork being in order. Still, he smells a rat and hires forgery expert John Griff (Reed Hadley) to prove that this is a scam.

Meanwhile, Reavis wastes no time in milking this racket. A precedent is set when a rail tycoon offers to pay a substantial amount to regain his company’s rights-of-way, figuring it’ll be easier than making a legal challenge. This puts the pressure on less well-off settlers to pay up or get out. Struggling to turn up conclusive evidence of fraud, the U.S. government offers Reavis 25 million dollars (about 780 million adjusted for inflation) for him to cede his claim on Arizona. Reavis sees this as them admitting defeat and refuses, figuring he can squeeze out much more than that. But how far can he push it before he finds himself swinging on the end of some frontier justice?

Let’s start off with the strongest aspect of the movie. Vincent Price really knocks it out of the park. Most of you know him from his appearances in horror movies directed by the likes of William Castle and Roger Corman, among others. However, prior to this role he had been a character actor in supporting roles. The Baron of Arizona was his first time in a lead role, and he proved to be up to the task. Though it occurs nearly a decade before his start in horror, you can see him develop the character traits that would later make him famous, particularly his Affably Evil persona. So it’s too bad that most of the remaining cast (predominantly the usual Lippert players) aren’t in the same league and play it more like a standard B-Western.

As is often the case with movies that purport to be based on real events, some creative liberties are taken with the facts. The biggest issue in this regard is how Reavis gets tripped up. In reality, two aspects exposed him as a fraud. The first was how the “antique” documents legitimizing the Peralta land grant were written using an anachronistic steel-tipped pen instead of a more period appropriate quill. More important was how the Spanish documents were riddled with grammatical errors that would have been unacceptable in a Royal Court decree. This isn’t surprising when you consider how Reavis got his start in forgery from writing up fake weekend passes during his time in the Civil War. In such cases, being good enough to pass casual inspection is all that’s needed. However, as a story clincher it could make Reavis look incompetent (arguably he was) and result in an unsatisfying resolution. Still, I think it could have worked if properly written.

Unfortunately, the fashion in which Reavis gets caught here is disappointing in its own right. In this case, it gets determined that the ink he used in one of the documents at the monastery was of an incorrect composition. Personally, I don’t buy that the forensic science techniques of the time could determine any such thing. Remember, this was back when fingerprint identification as we know it was in its infancy. But even if they could, the way it gets presented is inept. It’s akin to one of those mysteries where much of the sleuth’s deductions involve information withheld from the readers/viewers and the culprit is someone who wasn’t even properly introduced in the narrative. As a result, it comes across as something of a copout.

One of the more painful weak points is how romantic dialogue gets handled. Sam Fuller is a director and writer better known for his dour war films like The Steel Helmet and The Big Red One. As you can imagine, the mushy stuff doesn’t come naturally to him, and it really shows here. Even Vincent Price is unable to save it. And when Vincent Price is stymied by your dialogue, you’ve got a problem.

Then there’s the music. With shoestring productions that you get from guys like Lippert, you expect a collection of stock music cues awkwardly edited into the soundtrack. So I was rather surprised to learn that this movie had an actual composer. Especially since it still sounded like a collection of awkwardly edited in stock music cues.

I really wanted to like this movie. Honestly I did. And Vincent Price really does go above and beyond the call of duty. Still, one man can’t carry an entire production. Perhaps someday the story of James Reavis will get a proper big screen treatment. But with the current indifference to Westerns, I’m not counting on it happening anytime soon.

Intermission!

• All that panic over road maintenance
• Unconvincing palm reading
• “I’d advise you to investigate this claim at once, Mr. Miller, for you are living on our land.”
• Obligatory MST3K Connections: So very many. As noted earlier, the most prominent is producer Robert L. Lippert, producer of Rocketship X-M, Jungle Goddess, Lost Continent, King Dinosaur, Radar Secret Service, and Last of the Wild Horses (which he also directed). Others include Vladimir Sokoloff (I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Reed Hadley (Last of the Wild Horses), I. Stanford Jolley (The Rebel Set), Tristram Coffin (The Corpse Vanishes, The Crawling Hand, Radar Secret Service, and The Brute Man), Gene Roth (Earth vs the Spider, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Tormented, and The Rebel Set), Angelo Rossitto (The Corpse Vanishes and The Magic Sword), and Stuart Holmes (Rocketship X-M and The She-Creature). It even reportedly has Ed Wood (who needs no introduction) as a stuntman.