Duke Nicholson, Jack Nicholson’s grandson, isn’t much of an actor. And “The Deputy,” the seedy, bloody thriller he stars in, never rises out of the B-movie miasma it was born in.

But for a bad movie, I have to say it’s kind of fun. And Nicholson, cast as a slovenly, lazy lout who is slow off the mark, a part-time “deputy” caught up in a border country mess, isn’t awful at playing the last guy to get a clue.

The plot is simple. The stakes rise, grimly, incrementally and predictably. And we know that Deputy Toby, summoned to work in his tattered sleep tank-top and pajama bottoms, cannot be as slow as he seems. Then again…

His bottom-of-the-social-ladder life in smalltown TexaMexiZona consists of a single-wide that dates from the Kennedy Administration, a high-mileage waitress baby mama (Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter) and a part-time job that comes with a badge and a gun and an assurance that he’ll get all the s—t work the sheriff (William H. Macy) and two other deputies (Stephen Dorff and Tiffany Haddish) won’t do.

Toby’s called in to watch a body in the town bar’s parking lot. Somebody got himself shot, somebody with an Old West family of vengeful siblings. “Mexicans did it,” or somebody else. Anyways, the sheriff’s got to go inform the family way out in the county. His chief deputy (Dorff) takes his sweet time clocking in. The coroner’s not exactly readily available.

So there’s nothing for it but for the slob in his PJs and a badge to sit around waiting to be relieved, for the body to be removed and the crime scene cleared. Fine. So long as Toby A) doesn’t run out of smokes or B) doesn’t get bored and slip off for a little something with someone on the side (Devon Ross).

Menacing Latinos in a yellow mustang are rumbling about. The brutish rednecks of the murdered man’s family are on the prowl.

Toby’s girlfriend’s begging him to flee to Houston with her. And slower-than-slow Toby is slow to pick up on how little urgency his uniformed superiors bring to this case, even after he loses the body.

Cinematographer and music video director Matt Sukkar and the producers pulled in solid B-list talent to surround our not-wholly-miscast leading man. Slow and predictable as the picture turns out to be, it’s easy to see what they saw in the material — a lean, topical B-movie thriller with atmosphere, thugs and yokels and sexpots and a rube trying to survive one long, bad night on a job he’s never been any damn good at.

You lost the body?

“I thought you guys were messin’ with me,” Toby confesses to Deputy Billy (Dorff).

Maybe they were. Maybe somebody else grabbed it. Maybe somebody or somebodies Toby would never suspect knows something about it.

And we’re just invested enough in this bloody B-movie to see who did what and how, and if our hapless “Deputy” is up to the challenge of just surviving another night on the job in BFE, America.

Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity, smoking, profanity

Cast: Duke Nicholson, William H. Macy, Billie Lourd, Devon Russ, Stephen Dorff, Alyssa Villa and Tiffany Haddish.

Credits: Directed by Matt Sukkar, scripted by Carlo Bernard and Victor Gischler. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:38