Francis Galluppi Talks “The Last Stop in Yuma County,” “Evil Dead”

First things first: Yes, Francis Galluppi will direct a new film in the Evil Dead series. And no, he can’t tell you anything about it. However, in our Zoom interview, he is able to demonstrate his genuine belief as a horror and suspense fan by pointing to the “Evil Dead” poster in his office and the “three Necronomicons on my desk.”

Galluppi landed the coveted gig after Sam Raimi saw Galluppi’s feature debut “The Last Stop in Yuma County,” the acclaimed thriller hitting theaters and digitally this week. Shot in 20 days on a budget of “about a million” dollars, the film takes place almost entirely in a roadside diner in an unspecified past where traveling salesmen and rotary phones are still prevalent. As guests wait for a tanker truck to arrive, the place is soon populated by a group of independent film legends, including Jim Cummings as a knife salesman, Jocelin Donahue as a waitress, and Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan as bank robbers, who try (and fail) to keep a low profile. The film is nasty in the best sense – a lean, darkly funny and unpredictable ride that feels both like a throwback to the crime films of the 1970s and extremely contemporary.

In short, it’s easy to see what Raimi and Ghost House Pictures saw in the film’s DNA that makes Galluppi the perfect fit for their universe. Further evidence can also be found in his two previous films “High Desert Hell” and “The Gemini Project”. And it’s no coincidence that “Evil Dead” is a major source of inspiration for the filmmaker, who began his career in music before turning to cinema. “It’s one of the films that rightly made me want to make films,” enthuses Galluppi. “If I had never seen ‘Evil Dead,’ I probably wouldn’t have gone out into the desert with my friends and made my first short film.”

Below are some highlights from our conversation with Galluppi about making the twisty thriller, working with his dream cast, and what’s next.

He would be open to a game version of “Last Stop in Yuma County.”

It should be said as a compliment that the film feels like a play at times thanks to the largely unique locations, strong characters and real-time setting. And Galluppi feels the same way, noting that he’s a fan of films like “Rope,” “Dial M for Murder” and even the underrated “Phone Booth.” That’s also how he made his short films – “High Desert Hell” is set in a remote California desert, while “The Gemini Project” was made because “my buddy had a cabin up in Oregon.”

The place may seem familiar to you.

“Last Stop” really took off when Galluppi, scouting locations, came across an existing diner set at the Four Aces Movie Ranch in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles. He recalled that throughout his music career he often ended up in such places in the middle of nowhere. “There was always this eerie feeling of going in and feeling like a fish out of water,” he notes. “I’m very neurotic, but when I came in I felt like I wasn’t in the know about a secret that everyone else knew. I think that laid the foundation for me to start writing this story.”

What he didn’t know at the time: The restaurant also served as a filming location for countless music videos, commercials and shows. “Now that I know it, I see it all the time,” he admits. It’s in the new season of ‘Dave,’ it’s in ‘House of 1,000 Corpses,’ it’s in ‘Identity.'” In fact, Galluppi’s was sitting with its composer Matthew Compton during the editing when he mentioned that the restaurant was well known happened . “He said, ‘I think I’ve eaten there before,'” Galluppi recalls. “And I was like, ‘No, dude, you did the music for ‘Palm Springs,’ which targeted this restaurant!”

There will be blood.

Without giving too much away, sending a group of desperate people to a hot desert restaurant with money on the line is bound to cause incidents. This also meant that his actors were almost always on set, even if they were just sitting in a booth in the background of a shot. Nevertheless, Galluppi says: “Everyone was in a really good mood. Honestly, it felt like summer camp every day.”

This goodwill also extended to scenes in which the actors had to be still or lie in a pool of blood – due to the low budget, there was no money for fake corpses. While lying down at work might not sound so bad, Galluppi insists, “It’s not as great as it sounds. The blood is so sticky that someone has to lie there for two days. I felt so bad.”

Nobody auditioned for the film.

Perhaps the good vibes were due to the fact that the cast and crew were all “film nerds and cinephiles” who spent the long days enthralling each other’s work. “Nobody was there for a paycheck,” he says. Although he worked with casting director David Guglielmo to put together the ensemble, Galluppi said he never auditioned actors – he knew who he wanted based on their previous work. These include genre legend Barbra Crampton as a sheriff’s secretary and Sierra McCormick, who impressed him with her one-take scene in “The Vast of Night.” He had even written Donahue’s role with Donahue in mind, even though he didn’t know her personally.

Galluppi was a fan of filmmaker and actor Cummings from his films “Thunder Road” and “The Beta Test” and heard him talk on a podcast about how he was rarely asked to star in just one film. So Galluppi sent him a letter – and Cumming called and invited him to coffee. “The next day I went and we talked about ‘South Park’ for three hours,” Galluppi recalls. “And in the end he was my North Star – there were so many moments on set where my face was buried in my hands and he said to me, ‘It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be great.’ And coming from someone who had so much experience making bad movies with his friends, that meant the world.”

His producer literally bet everything on the film.

Galluppi repeatedly emphasizes what a “truly independent” film the production is. In fact, he had been trying to make the film for years. “There have been 20 different versions over the years, and it was a rollercoaster of emotions trying to make the film,” he admits, adding that he was in the time it took to make the film turn, had two children.

At one point, his executive producer James Claeys had offered to sell his house to finance the film so they could make it the way they wanted. “At the time I said, ‘This is crazy.’ “Don’t do that,” Galluppi recalls. For a while the script was with a production company, but Galluppi realized they had a different vision than he did – including that they wanted “name” actors. “As soon as the option expired, I pulled it,” he notes.

By this point he had started putting together his dream line-up, so he returned to Claeys. “I said, ‘Look, man, I don’t know if you’re serious or not.’ But if so, what it means is this: We can do it however we want, no one is going to tell us how to make this film.’ And he did it, he sold his house. And a month later we were up and running.”

His children haven’t seen his films, but they have heard about them.

Speaking of his kids, they’re far too young to have seen “Last Stop,” but he notes that he spent so much time talking about the film that they picked up a few things. “My daughter knows the words ‘last stop’ and ‘Yuma County’ very well,” he says with a laugh. “And because I just talked about ‘Evil Dead,’ that’s what she calls everything. She did something on her Lite-Brite and I asked what it was. She says, ‘Evil is dead.’ It didn’t make any sense.”