Cornel Wilde is Don Arturo Bordega - a rough & tumble Californian living in the 1840s, and a vocal advocate for California's annexation by the United States. But a bandit gang consisting of the opportunistic José Martínez (Alfonso Bedoya) and the Brios brothers, Ernesto (Eugene Iglesias) and Fredo (John Dehner) are determined to violently oppose the movement advocating American annexation of California, as part of their plot to deliver California to the imperial domain of the Russian Czar (in exchange for a promise of political appointments). Wilde gets into a number of Zorro-esque swordfights and scraps, but the situation turns deadly serious when Martinez's men seize a quantity of rifles from gunsmith Sam Lawrence (Hank Patterson), in order to arm a force in support of the Russian conquest of California. This brings Lawrence's beautiful daughter, Julia (Teresa Wright) into the fray. But it may be too late as the rifles make their way to a Russian fortress in Northern California where a scheme to violently seize California is waiting to be hatched....

California Conquest was a film of its times at the height of the Cold War and the McCarthy period when some in Hollywood felt it was their duty to show the Russians for the grasping imperialists they were even before Karl Marx drew breath. Cornel Wilde follows in the footsteps of Zorro in this quickie from the team of producer Sam Katzman and director Lew Landers set long ago when Los Angeles was just a collection of shacks but the Russkies were already the menace. We get a nice helping of swordfights, gunfights, oat burning horse chases, along with some great outdoor photography. Villainy is supplied by those usual suspects Alfonso Bedoya and John Dehner, while the biggest (and most pleasant) surprise is a unique appearance in Technicolor by the usually demure Theresa Wright as a feisty young filly who strides about in boots and britches and is handy with a gun. She should given Wilde a swift clip about the ear for calling them "those horrible pants" and the film subscribes to the usual nonsense that she's only capable of turning heads when she changes into a nice frilly dress. Wilde is charming and Wright feisty, definitely based on other rough and tough female legends of the old west like Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley and Belle Starr. John Dehner and Eugene Iglesias costar as Bedoya's co-conspirators, fooling themselves into believing that by betraying their own people, they could rise in power without worry of being betrayed by the Czar's leaders in the new world.