The Last Stop in Yuma County

The Last Stop in Yuma County
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Francis Galluppi
Written by	Francis Galluppi
Produced by	Matt O'Neill Atif Malik 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 Gene Jones Faizon Love Richard Brake
Cinematography	Mac Fisken
Edited by	Francis Galluppi
Music by	Matthew Compton
Production companies	Local Boogeyman XYZ Films Carte Blanche Random Lane
Distributed by	Well Go USA Entertainment
Release dates	September 23, 2023 (2023-09-23) (Fantastic Fest) May 10, 2024 (2024-05-10) (United States)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1 million
Box office	$41,520

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 was released in United States in select cinemas and in digital formats on 10 May 2024.

Plot

At a remote desert location in Yuma County, Arizona in the 1970s, a travelling 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 managed to get away with around $700,000 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's 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 recognises 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 refuelling 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 a middle-aged couple from Texas, a pair of young aspiring criminals Miles and Sybil, and a 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 mortally 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.

Cast

• Jim Cummings as The Knife Salesman
• Jocelin Donahue as Charlotte
• Sierra McCormick as Sybil
• Nicholas Logan as Travis
• Michael Abbott Jr. as Charlie
• Connor Paolo as Gavin
• Alex Essoe as Sarah
• Robin Bartlett as Earline
• Jon Proudstar as Pete
• Sam Huntington as David
• Ryan Masson as Miles
• Barbara Crampton as Virginia
• Gene Jones as Robert
• Faizon Love as Vernon
• Richard Brake as Beau
• Robert Broski as a truck driver

Release

The Last Stop in Yuma County premiered at the Fantastic Fest on September 23, 2023.

The film was released in the select theaters and on digital formats by Well Go USA Entertainment on May 10, 2024.

Reception

Box office

In North America (Canada, USA and Puerto Rico), The Last Stop in Yuma County grossed $41,520 from 45 cinemas during its opening weekend, finishing 29^th in the box office rankings. As of May 2024, that constituted 100% of the film's revenue worldwide.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 57 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "A smart, tautly constructed crime thriller with some fresh twists, The Last Stop in Yuma County marks writer-director Francis Galluppi as a talent to watch." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

External links

• The Last Stop in Yuma County at IMDb