The Last Stop in Yuma County (now streaming on Paramount+) is a gas station with no gas, a motel with no guests and a diner with no air conditioning – but there’s plenty of pie! And escalating suspense! Such is the setting for the directorial debut of Francis Galluppi, who scraped together a million bucks to make a tight little thriller involving a handful of odd characters – the cast led by Jim Cummings, director and star of The Beta Test and The Wolf of Snow Hollow – a miscellany of weapons and, of course, a bag of money. The result was wily enough for Galluppi to be hired by Sam Raimi for an upcoming Evil Dead feature, which seems about right.

The Gist: “You’ll die for our rhubarb pie.” Ominous sign outside this diner, but it wouldn’t be quite so ominous if we didn’t have an inkling that some gnarly shit was about to go down there. A gentleman identified only as The Knife Salesman (Cummings) pilots his thirsty yellow POS next to a pump only to learn from the kindly proprietor Vernon (Faizon Love) that he’s got no gas to sell. The next gas station is 100 miles away, he says. The tanker truck is on its way, he says. You can wait in the diner until it gets here, he says. TKS sighs. Then the local sheriff (Michael Abbott Jr.) drops off his wife Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue) to open the restaurant. TKS fiddles with the radio and a news report squawks something something bank robbery something something green Ford Pinto. TKS pulls his keys out of the ignition, grabs his case of gin-yoo-wine Japanese kitchen knives, and parks at a booth.

And then wouldnchaknowit, a green Ford Pinto pulls in. Needs gas. No gas. Deep sigh. Two Real Characters climb out – Beau (Richard Brake), a steely-eyed stick of beef jerky, and Travis (Nicholas Logan), a beefy sweathog in saggy pants. Confirmed: there’s about $700k in their trunk. They sleaze into the diner and before you know it, their guns are out and Beau is cutting the phone line and wrapping his hands around Charlotte’s neck while TKS concentrates on holding in his pee. Stay chill and nobody will get hurt, they say. We’ll just sit over here while we wait for the gas truck, they say. Charlotte pours them coffee. They don’t want any pie. Can you turn on the a/c, Travis says. Can’t – busted, Charlotte says. So everybody sits and sweats.

This place being the don’t say the title of the movie, it’s inevitably a temporary dead end for anybody with a hollow gas tank within dozens and dozens of miles. And so a bunch of none-the-wisers pile into the diner. There’s an older couple, Robert (Gene Jones) and Earline (Robin Bartlett); he naps sitting up and she knits. Vernon comes in for The Usual for breakfast. A young couple, Miles (Robin Masson) and Sybil (Sierra McCormick), roll in on some serious Connie and Blyde vibes. A local named Pete (Jon Proudstar) straddles a stool and orders some biscuits and gravy. Beau plunks a coin in the jukebox and you’d think the music might fill the silence and break the tension but I’m here to tell you that it only makes it worse. Much to our delight.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Yuma County hits like Hell or High Water if it was directed by the Coen Bros. (think Blood Simple, maybe No Country for Old Men), with a couple of speeches penned by Quentin Tarantino.

Performance Worth Watching: The desperation Cummings slyly summons for this role is both hilarious and off-putting. 

Memorable Dialogue: Sybil and Miles dropped the reference after I dubbed them Connie and Blyde, promise: 

Sybil: We’re just like Bonnie and Clyde.

Miles: No, like Kit and Holly.

Sybil: Who the hell is that?

Miles: Badlands, baby.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Smalltalk chitchat is always excruciating, but never more so than when there’s a big invisible bubble of situational irony in the room. Some people know. Some people don’t. What’s the tipping point? Galluppi expertly winds up the tension and peaks at the end of the second act, then puts his characters at the cusp of a what now? third act that pushes the movie to the frayed ends of morality and sanity, the silent brooding of its bleak fatalism pierced by the honk of a horn and a baby’s cry, which make us laugh in spite of ourselves. Which only makes the movie easier to admire – and more fun, of course.

With its emphasis on visual style, colorful characters and dark comedy, Yuma County is a B-movie through and through. Is it “about” anything? I dunno. Wanna talk about how everyone is going to die eventually? Didn’t think so. I’d rather note how ridiculous it is that Vernon eats toast with a fork, how tenebrous Brake’s performance is, how Cummings looks like a weasel in a mid-century sport jacket, how Charlotte is a character worth clinging to for her understated blue-collar nobility, how inspired Logan is at playing a dopey galoot. Sometimes things in movies play out in an unsettling manner, reflecting the crepuscular realities of life, and all we can do is shake our heads and laugh in the face of folly and futility. 

Our Call: Taut, gripping, funny, black-as-spades thrillers like this don’t come along too often. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.