Take one milquetoast traveling salesman. Place him in a diner that’s empty, except for a kindly, beautiful waitress. In another movie, you have the ingredients for the meet-cute of a romcom. In The Last Stop in Yuma County, however, you have a starter kit for a powder keg.

The wonderful and underrated Jim Cummings (The Beta Test) is that salesman; the equally wonderful and underrated Jocelin Donahue (Doctor Sleep), the waitress. Car trouble has him stranded for the near future in the middle of nowhere, Arizona, so he bides his time in a booth at the restaurant next door, even if its A/C is as inoperable as his ride. Coffee and conversation follow. So do crimes, eventually, as more people pass through the door.

To spill the details would deny you the pleasure of experiencing each of the plot’s many about-faces and sudden turns; several surprised me, and one hits as such a rude awakening, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a tasing. Once tension arrives, which is early, it never leaves.

Shocking, sad and funny, the film is nearly a one-roomer, save for a few scenes outdoors and at the local sheriff’s office, which is not too far and also not near enough. Taking into account the arid climate, saloon-style setting and mix of characters of varying savoriness, Yuma County plays like a contemporary Western. I mean, it’s right there in the title, starting with — but hardly limited to — a direct reference to Delmer Daves’ 3:10 to Yuma, a genuine cowboys-and-outlaws classic.

Doing its part to support that theory is the pervasive heat; the oscillating whirs of each electric fan seem immediately defeated, and the audience feels that heavy oppression. (Or, as a lifelong Oklahoman, maybe it’s just me.)

I’ve seen others compare The Last Stop in Yuma County to the Coen brothers, specifically Fargo. That’s perhaps too reductive, although if the TV series‘ next season needed a new creative force, writer, director and editor Francis Galluppi would be a steal.

With Yuma County so assured, it’s difficult to fathom that the list of Galluppi’s previous features is blank, yet it’s easy to see why he’s been snapped up to deliver a new Evil Dead spinoff. The guy knows how to craft, build and sustain suspense. The proof is all here in a tight, taut 90-minute examination of avarice, heartlessness, helplessness and the restorative properties of rhubarb pie. Of all the movies to hit theaters in the first half of 2024, this one remains my favorite. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Hey, dig this jazz, cool cat: Because his doll left him for his rich daddy, Stan (Ray Danton, The Centerfold Girls) terrorizes the town as a serial rapist. Basically a walking tube of Brylcreeme, Stan’s known ’round town as “the Aspirin Kid,” so named for the me-gotsa-headache ruse he uses to penetrate thresholds when women are home alone.

Detective Culloran (Steve Cochran, 1949’s White Heat) is on the case, which gets personal after Stan bingos the bongo of the cop’s wife (Fay Spain, The Private Lives of Adam & Eve). And then really, really personal when she discovers she’s got a bun in the oven.

The Beat Generation marks a next-year reunion for High School Confidential! producer Albert Zugsmith and starlet Mamie Van Doren. It’s something of a spiritual follow-up, with Ms. VD playing another saucy, savory sex bomb. Here, she’s victim No. 3 … or would be, if not for the fact that she wants it bad. “I wish I had,” she tells the police. “He looked like real gone kicks.”

The movie sure is, provided you’re willing to take it as a half-serious crime story. It’s even a bit progressive in that director Charles F. Haas (1959’s Girls Town) doesn’t blame the victim for the rape. But he does shame her into nixing her plans for a rhymes-with-smuh-smortion.

To be fair, despite The Beat Generation’s title, beatniks barely figure into the story, although the only and only Vampira, free of wig, spouts some free-verse nonsense while a white rat hangs on her shoulder. Somehow, the whole shebang ends with a fight underwater. —Rod Lott

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Most men — and, honestly, some women — are Peeping Toms. Abasement in all its glory!

The criminal, sexual act of illicit self-pleasure while a person is unknowing, unwilling and nonconsensual is quite damning and will, at the very least, label you as a pervert among family, friends and neighbors.

So remember, kids: Keep an eye out for Mom … unless, of course, you’re peeping on your mom, which will lead to other problems I’m not able to discuss without the care of a professional — a doctor or a hooker.

In the fickle world of pop culture, the stereotypical Peeping Tom is most often a trope of the teen sex comedy, rubbing one out in the girls’ locker room while getting his crank stuck in a vice-like device. But in 1960, filmmaker Micheal Powell decided to cast a unsexy shadow on the world’s most lonely act in the film Peeping Tom.

When the film premiered, people were outraged, and Powell’s name was dragged through the mud, ultimately killing his career. (Sadly, the billions of gallons of sperm while watching the movie waiting for the tame sex scenes were never accounted for …)

It starts with a shadowy man hiding a film camera under his coat as he seeks a prostitute. In her most Cockney accent, she takes to him a flophouse and, unexpectedly, he murders her with an extended leg of his camera’s tripod. As the tape runs out, I imagine he climaxes.

This man is Mark (Carl Boehm). He makes films of the crimes and watches them ad nauseam, as one will wantonly do. He works for a bookshop as a cover for taking snapshots of nudie cuties, but his dream job is to be a film director. (If only he waited about five years for the porn industry to boom!) Mark’s also a sad loner and very quiet, snapping pictures of disfigured woman to masturbate to.

Eventually, he’s befriended by his tenant who views his works, especially the films his father made of him being sexually frightened, as stunting his emotional growth and causing him to deal with the trauma though voyeurism.

Long story short, Mark is punished for his crimes in the worst way possible in the early ’60s.

A true testament to both swingin’ London and swingin’ ballsacks, Powell’s non-illicit camera gets the dirtiest grime in the gear game. Boehm’s Mark is still relevant today — just sub the cheesecake shots with live camgirls who’ll act out your fantasy for an OnlyFans subscription.

Much in the same vein as Joe Spinell’s work on William Lustig’s Maniac, but with a Piccadilly Circus façade, Peeping Tom is a true classic of perverted outré cinema that needs to be reevaluated in these much more maligned times.

Until then, keep it in your pants, Junior! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

After famous model Bella Baylor (Zombeavers’ Lexi Atkins) is mowed down by a car, new and naive model Zoe (Cory Anne Roberts) is called into replacement duty on a bikini shoot. Part of that entails rooming with her fellow tanned-and-toned mannequins in a rented home which gives this film its double-meaning title of Model House.  

Their first night may prove to be the end of their days, as the pad is invaded by gun-totaling criminals in comedy and tragedy masks. The felons (Scout Taylor-Compton and Piranha 3DD’s Chris Zylka) demand the models swindle social-media followers out of a million bucks by posting a donation link to the Bella Baylor Family Foundation — a nonexistent charity that’s actually an offshore account. Do it for the ’gram. 

With Model House, music video veteran Derek Pike follows up his directorial debut, the inauspicious made-for-Lifetime Kidnapping in the Grand Canyon, with something in no danger of airing on that women-centric cable channel. Not when the models, save Zoe, are so transparently portrayed as intellectually vapid; one is all into OnlyFans, while the most insufferable has named her breasts Kylie and Kendall … and can’t wait to show them. 

Recently seen trespassing across another suburban threshold in A Creature Was Stirring, Taylor-Compton may be top-billed, but Model House’s blueprint showcases Roberts (an actual contestant on TV’s America’s Next Top Model) in her first movie role. While competent, she and the others are helpless to keep the whole thing from being stolen by Randy Wayne (Hellraiser: Judgment), also one of the producers, in an amusing recurring bit as an in-denial ex. 

Although slickly made, the movie isn’t successful. Pike’s own script fails him by going serious after a casually comedic, playfully self-aware setup suggesting a twist on the Slumber Party Massacre template. What follows is not that, but paint-by-numbers content nearly as tedious as the influencers it depicts. Pike shot this modestly budgeted thriller in the cost-effective environs of Oklahoma City. That the Sooner State capital is passed off as Los Angeles is hysterical, considering how only about four people dot the street. If you’re willing to buy that, perhaps you’ll swallow the rest? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

The Fanatic is a 2019 film directed by Limp Biscuit (I refuse to spell it like that) frontman Fred Durst. Working behind the camera and off the stage, Durst embodies the roving spirit of changing career lanes, turning him into the thinking man’s Rob Zombie.

That being said, he is a terrible director and his movie, The Fanatic, is worse.

Sadly not based on The Fan, the Wesley Snipes/Robert De Niro baseball fandom-film from 1996, the movie is all about the crazed fandom (femidom?) of movie nerds, comic-book geeks and very stinky horror fans in general.

It depicts L.A. as a land of celluloid dreams caustic shithole that drearily gleams in the broken spotlight. John Travolta, on his third or fourth comeback, is Moose, a street performer with Hollywood’s version of autism. In his bad haircut, he is a “celebrity” impersonator as a London “bobby” policeman.

But, in reality, he’s the No. 1 fan of genre actor Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa). He is fanatical about him, if you will.

Moose meets Dunbar at a Hollywood memorabilia store for an autograph that, in Moose’s mind, is a meet-cute moment. Wiping the fantasies away, he is a truly pushy fan — but Dunbar is just as worse as a B-grade celebrity.

They have words, which end with Dunbar saying he will autograph a dejected Moose “with his fists.” Ow. Wanting a do-over, Moose starts stalking him, using a star map to find his house.

Eventually, after attempting to strangle a dirty magician, he accidentally kills Dunbar’s maid. Though sad about it, Moose — or, perhaps, Travolta — runs around with fake antlers, takes a dump, uses Dunbar’s toothbrush and takes a selfie while kissing Dunbar’s sleeping head, which I guess is kind of sweet.

Realizing that Moose has been in his house, Dunbar pumps the Limp Biscuit (once again, I refuse to spell it like that) in his car. Much like one of Durst’s unlistenable songs, the finale is well-done trash, but in the end, it’s still trash.

This film was made with the association of Redbox. Not wanting to spend the $1.99 for a rental, I saw this on Amazon Prime for free and, well, it was interesting to revisit Travolta’s career … Durst’s, not so much.

Either way, someone owes me $1.99.

While most of the actors are grocery-store brand, Travolta is a big name brand, but one on the clearance shelf. His unwanted performance is a hilarious to both the clinically sane and mentally ill people, feeling like one long joke that no one gets.

But as a director, Durst is dangerously terrible to all people. The movie plays like it were Durst’s vapid handshake to the “meaningful” world of prestige pictures, yet everything about it takes it to broken levels of comic derision because, well, it’s Fred fucking Durst.

In other words, this Fanatic needs to go back to his mom’s basement and shut the door, playing “Break Stuff” while ferociously masturbating. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.