Taglines: Never bring a knife salesman to a gunfight.
The Last Stop in Yuma County movie storyline. While awaiting the next fuel truck at a middle-of-nowhere Arizona rest stop, a traveling young knife salesman is thrust into a high-stakes hostage situation by the arrival of two similarly stranded bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty–or cold, hard steel–to protect their bloodstained, ill-begotten fortune.
The debut feature from writer/director/editor Francis Galluppi, is a neo-western heist thriller that channels Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, among other greats. Featuring a killer soundtrack of jukebox hits and an incredible ensemble cast including Jim Cummings (Thunder Road), Jocelin Donahue (The House of the Devil), Richard Brake (MANDY), and Faizon Love (Friday) The Last House in Yuma County will have you on the edge of your seat. This intense and addictive neo-noir film features a cast brimming with familiar faces for all fans of American indie horror films.
The Last Stop in Yuma County is a 2023 American crime thriller film written and directed by Francis Galluppi and starring Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Richard Brake, Faizon Love, and Michael Abbott Jr. It is Galluppi’s feature directorial debut. The Last Stop in Yuma County premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 23, 2023. The film was released in the United States in select theaters and on digital platforms on May 10, 2024, by Well Go USA Entertainment.
About the Story
At a remote desert location in Yuma County, Arizona, in the 1970s, a traveling knives salesman stops at a filling station. Vernon, the station and motel attendant, informs him that the station’s pumps are dry, and there are no other filling stations for over 100 miles (160 km), but that a refueling truck is expected to arrive soon.
On the radio, the salesman hears about a bank robbery earlier that morning in Buckeye, where the robbers fled with approximately $250,000 in a green Ford Pinto with a damaged rear end. Charlotte, a waitress at the nearby diner, is dropped off by her husband Charlie, who is the local sheriff; she opens the diner and welcomes the salesman in. In conversation with Charlotte, he mentions that he is on his way to Carlsbad, California, for his daughter Sarah’s birthday.
Shortly afterwards, the two bank robbers, Travis and Beau, arrive in a green Pinto, which the salesman recognizes as matching the description of the getaway car in the Buckeye robbery. He communicates his suspicions to Charlotte, who tries to phone her husband at the police station, but Beau forestalls her and cuts the phone cord before Charlotte can say a word to the sheriff. The robbers force her and the salesman at gunpoint to continue behaving normally—until the refueling truck arrives, or somebody else with enough fuel in their car stops by. Unbeknownst to everybody in the diner, the truck will never arrive because it has run off the road and lies overturned several miles away.
Charlie has his deputy, Gavin, come by the diner to pick up coffee for the police station and Charlotte tries to slip a plea for help to him on a coffee lid, but the coffee is spilled with the lid unseen when Gavin bumps into Travis. Meanwhile, joining the salesman and Charlotte in the diner are an elderly couple from Texas, a pair of young aspiring criminals named Miles and Sybil, and local rancher Pete.
With the fuel tank of Pete’s vehicle being almost full, Beau and Travis try to force him into giving his car keys to them, but with almost everybody in the diner carrying a firearm, a Mexican standoff develops and Pete tries to negotiate for some arrangement out of that impasse. However, Charlotte stabs Beau with a knife, which sparks a shootout in which everybody gets killed except for the salesman.
The salesman decides to take the robbers’ loot from the Pinto’s trunk, but is interrupted by a young couple with a baby who arrive on the scene. In the ensuing scuffle, the salesman ends up killing them both. He syphons some fuel from Pete’s truck and drives off. The sheriff and deputy arrive and discover the carnage. The sheriff tracks the fleeing salesman, whose car has run out of gasoline near the wreck of the refueling truck. In the confrontation between the salesman and the sheriff, the salesman gets fatally injured with a gunshot wound to the stomach while igniting the truck’s fuel load, with the subsequent explosion engulfing the sheriff. With the robbers’ money blowing away by the wind, the salesman crawls dying to a bush nearby.
The Last Stop in Yuma County (2024)
Directed by: Francis Galluppi
Starring: Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Sierra McCormick, Nicholas Logan, Michael Abbott Jr, Connor Paolo, Alex Essoe, Robin Bartlett, Jon Proudstar, Sam Huntington, Ryan Masson, Barbara Crampton
Screenplay by: Francis Galluppi
Production Design by: Charlie Textor
Cinematography by: Mac Fisken
Film Editing by: Francis Galluppi
Costume Design by: Emma Fleming
Set Decoration by: Karli Watland
Art Direction by: Adam Gascho
Music by: Matthew Compton
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language.
Distributed by: Well Go USA Entertainment
Release Date: May 10, 2024
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