RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE

Two Death Valley worm wranglers, Ralph (Mike Cartel) and Jason (Al Valetta) secretly watch strangers bury a coffin in an empty ravine. When the gravediggers leave, Ralph and Jason uncover the shallow grave to find a beautiful woman marked with the name "Fate" (Seeska Vandenberg) unconscious in the box.

After saving Fate's life, the worm ranchers get abducted by several female cultists who were searching for their recently vanished sister-member, Fate. At the cult commune, Ralph and Jason finish a series of lunatical ordeals that earn them membership in the clan. Amiable Jason quickly finds romance from the group while hostile Ralph is treated with contempt.

The cult boss, Hesperia (Cindy Donlan) tells the men that Fate had been negotiating with a gunrunning cartel to help her sell something priceless (referred to as platinum) on the world market for a fee, but was instead betrayed. The cartel group then buried Fate as a warning. Fate says the mysterious contraband is under guard at the cartel desert warehouse, that she knows intimately. Hesperia leads a break-in to steal back the platinum, using Ralph and Jason as expendable decoys.

The heist is successful but the outraged cartel follow the cult and attack the commune in a ferocious gun battle. Hesperia loads her girls and Jason in a helicopter from the commune roof to the worm ranch. Ralph is left behind, captured and brought back to the warehouse for a tortuous interrogation. At the moment before death, an explosion from a time bomb set earlier by Ralph saves him, while eliminating his tormentors.

Fate meets Ralph after answering his phone call for help. She drives to the commune, gets Ralph to tell where he hid the mysterious platinum box, then casually shoots him. Unknown to Fate, Ralph still wears an armored vest (under his shirt) from the earlier gunfight but plays dead as Fate drives away.

At the commune, Fate finds the invaluable suitcase as Ralph described and opens it immediately. Fate breaks the lock and lifts out a metal box – but it moves on the table, glowing as it slowly unseals. Fate fights to shut the lid while burning light from the box ignites walls, table, floor into fire as the commune, with Fate, vaporizes.

Ralph learns that Hesperia has abandoned her cult, flying away as mystically as she had arrived. With sly malice, Ralph puts the confused women to work on his worm ranch. While delighted with the arrangement, Ralph and Jason see what seems to be another human burial down their hill. This time, the coffin's payload is far worse, but may be just what vampiric Ralph has needed all along.

Ralph is saved from death by a time bomb, Fate is vaporized by the mysterious platinum box, and Ralph takes control of the cult's women for his worm ranch.

The ending flips expectations: Ralph, once an outsider, outlasts both cartel and cult, surviving multiple assassination attempts thanks to his bulletproof vest and quick thinking. Fate’s demise at the hands of the glowing, possibly supernatural platinum box adds a surreal, darkly comic twist, while Ralph’s final act of putting the confused women to work suggests a cynical but fitting conclusion to this desert oddity.