It’s no small feat and an incredible gamble to make a film. It requires a team of creatives working tirelessly toward the same goal, forced to confront their limitations and turn them into opportunities at every step. In the case of first-time feature writer/director Francis Galluppi and his project The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023), this translates to shooting entire scenes and having to toss them because a storm raged through, impacting audio and the intended dry desert look of the narrative, not to mention executive producer James Claeys’s (Candy Corn) own gamble by selling his house to help fund production. Having had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2023, Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County went on to a wide U.S. theatrical release in May and is now set to come home, complete with multiple bonus features to enhance any appreciation you may have for this darkly comic neo-western thriller.
Jocelin Donahue as Charlotte in the western/crime/thriller, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, a Well Go USA release. Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
It’s a scorcher of a day in Yuma County and the only gas station for 100 miles is on empty. Luckily, the combined station and motel, run by Vernon (Faizon Love), is attached to a diner, run by Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue), where waiting patrons can grab a snack. On a day that begins like any other, Charlotte is visited by a knife salesman (Jim Cummings), a traveling couple (Gene Jones and Robin Bartlett), and two brothers in a hurry (Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan), each needing to refill their tanks, each with a specific need to get back on the road. With the A/C broken, the inside of Charlotte’s diner isn’t the cool oasis it usually is, leaving tensions to rise as high as the temperature outside until it reaches a boiling point of no return.
If you’re interested in a spoiler-free exploration of The Last Stop in Yuma County, head over to the initial Fantastic Fest 2023 spoiler-free review. Moving forward, details will likely be discussed on this neo-western thriller.
L-R: Nicholas Logan as Travis and Richard Brake as Beau in the western/crime/thriller, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, a Well Go USA release. Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
Presuming you’re cool with spoilers, here we go: what an absolute shit storm this film turns into and all because of greed. The obvious portion is the robbery committed by the brothers, thereby creating the necessary instigation of violence as they seek to escape from Yuma County before they’re discovered and arrested. This means keeping anyone who comes into the diner hostage, though the fewer who know something is amiss the better. Narratively, there’s a wonderful push-pull going on from the moment, quite early, that both Charlotte and the knife salesman realize who the robbers and are drafted in as hostages with the two from then on trying to signal help from new guests or passersby. Though Cummings’s (The Wolf of Snow Hollow) salesman is the first character that we meet, it’s Donahue’s (The House of the Devil) Charlotte who’s the proper hero, trying to protect everyone, keep all calm, and get help without anyone getting hurt. The salesman, however, is a proper coward, something which Cummings’s performance makes clear by the film’s end. Don’t mistake this to mean that fear isn’t natural in a situation with armed-men who don’t make threats lightly, that makes complete sense and fits within the real world. What this refers to, what makes him cowardly, and enables the film to really explore the depths of human darkness, is when the whole thing goes to hell about halfway through the film. Rather than get help, the salesman helps himself. Rather than try to survive the day, call the authorities, and maybe create a chance for someone else in the diner to live, he tries to steal the money for himself and kills more people in the process, orphaning a newborn.
L-R: Michael Abbott Jr. as Charlie and Barbara Crampton as Virginia in the western/crime/thriller, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, a Well Go USA release. Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
The most fascinating thing about Last Stop is its exploration of inevitability. Yeah, each character makes choices which lead them to where they are and those choices result in a great deal of death, but the lynchpin is the fuel truck. After the introduction of the circumstances via the salesman’s arrival at the gas station/diner, Galluppi shifts to a G-d’s eye montage in which the audience is shown the road everyone travels on, the tire tracks leading off of it, various parts of the truck (leaking), and the dead body of the driver behind the wheel. We know, in that moment, that the fuel truck is never coming. Viewed as a physical manifestation of the themes of the film, it could be taken as the absence of help or relief. None shall arrive no matter how hard one wishes for it. The folks who arrive at the diner are doomed, whether they know it or not. But, again, Last Stop is all about choices and each one could lead to salvation or consequences and, each time, just about everyone picks consequences. Only Charlotte seems to be trying to protect others (as well as herself, obviously), but her fate seems equally inevitable as Brake’s (Mandy) Beau sees her as the one to control whether it’s due to it being her diner or because he sees her as less of a threat, earning his focus all the way to the end. Again, that question of inevitability arises and whether or not anyone was going to live to see another day once that fuel truck failed to show.
L-R: Sierra McCormick as Sybil and Ryan Masson as Miles in the western/crime/thriller, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, a Well Go USA release. Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
If you find Yuma County rich and layered, the home release is going to offer you plenty of ways to explore the material. First up, there are three different feature-length commentary tracks (accessible through the audio setup menu) with Galluppi on each one. In one, Galluppi is joined by actors Cummings and Donahue, the second with Claeys, and a third with long-time collaborator cinematographer Mac Fisken (Night Shift). It’s rare enough for a home release to have one commentary track, let alone three, and each of these offers a different perspective on the filmmaking process. Of course, Cummings is not only an actor, but an executive producer of this project and filmmaker, so his commentary adds extra flavor to the proceedings. One amusing note he makes is how Galluppi had Cummings involved in a parking lot standoff scene after just doing so in one of his own recent projects. For a broader view of how they made the film, there’s an eight-minute “Making of” featurette that includes Galluppi, Claeys, and various cast and crew members detailing the struggles of making a first-time feature-length production. There’s a lot of chaos and a lot of laughs on the set, which ultimately lead to where we are now. There’s also a trailer for the film and the usual previews for other Well Go USA releases included.
Jim Cummings as The Knife Salesman in the western/crime/thriller, THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, a Well Go USA release. Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
In terms of the on-disc presentation, this is a standard HD video and Dolby 5.1 audio release. The picture is of a good quality and the sound is well-balanced. Much of the film is conversational, driven by character rather than action, but when the gun standoff reaches its apex, the sound is well-mixed so as to give the audience the sense that they are sitting right among the calamity.
If you’d like to learn more about the making of the film, make sure to check out this discussion between Galluppi and EoM Senior Interviewer Thomas Manning from the Fantastic Fest 2023 premiere.
If you missed the announcement, Galluppi’s been selected to direct the newest entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Though Last Stop doesn’t incorporate heavy bloodletting of the Evil Dead Rise (2023) variety, there’s a darkness that courses through his film, as well as an understanding of how to make the most out of a tight budget, that lends itself to this world. Despite its sunny disposition, Last Stop is cruel, exploring the worst parts of humanity and what happens when we allow greed to cloud judgement, when we allow opportunity to blind us toward the steep cliff on the other side. The Evil Dead movies (outside of Army of Darkness (1993)) are single-location stories and were made on budgets under $4 million (The Evil Dead (1983) being $350,000), and Last Stop mostly meets those criteria. If past is prologue, we Deadites are in for a wild ride.
Groovy.
The Last Stop in Yuma County Special Features:
- Making Of (8:29)
- Audio commentary with writer/director Francis Galluppi and actors Jim Cummings and Jocelin Donahue
- Audio commentary with writer/director Francis Galluppi and executive producer James Claeys
- Audio commentary with writer/director Francis Galluppi and cinematographer Mac Fisken
- Theatrical Trailer (2:10)
- Three (3) Well Go USA Previews
Available on digital May 10th, 2024.
Available on Blu-ray July 16th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Well Go USA The Last Stop in Yuma County webpage.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Recommendation
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