“The rest of the world will fall at our feet. And we shall rule for all eternity.”
The movie starts with a baton twirling teenager, Margie (Linda Jenkins), and her boyfriend Howie (Jay Ramsey). His car broke down out in the sticks so they hike to nearby farm house. Of course they take a shortcut and become totally lost. They see a campfire and approach. Off camera there are voices. Apparently by Howie’s reaction to them there is something wrong. He tells Margie to run. Then he attempts to run when he is shot. He manages to get away.
Jim Crandall (James Britton) is a reporter sent to the hospital to interview Howie but Howie is not allowed visitors at the time so Jim talks to Howie’s doctor about what happened. This is before HIPPA. It appears that the two men who confronted Howie and Margie were wearing confederate uniforms from the civil war and he was shot with a mini-ball. It also appears that Margie is still missing.
Margie’s sister is Sandy De Mar (Ann Pellegrino). She is a singer at a local lounge. The police go to the nightclub and tell Sandy that her sister is missing. Jim gets there as the police are leaving. Jim offers Sandy a ride home. She talks him into taking her to the area where her sister disappeared. Once there the police send them home.
The next day police Lt. Partane (Tim Holt) relates a story to Jim concerning a small concentration camp during World War II. When the camp was entered they found a bunch of kids whose records indicated that they should have been old. As if the Germans found some way to reverse the aging process. Then they found an old man on a table. The records indicated he should have been only 18. Then they found documents belonging to a scientist named Professor Von Hauser. He managed to evade capture when the camp was liberated.
Jim and Sandy return to the area where Margie disappeared and find an old farmhouse. They are chased by a would-be attacker and run right into the time machine field. Poof, they are zapped to 1789. They run into a patriot that yells witchcraft when he sees Jim’s cigarette lighter and flees. Then Poof again and they are zapped to 1963 and are in the laboratory of the one and only Professor Ernest Von Hauser (Jack Herman).
Von Hauser, being the cliché egotistical bad guy, explains his experiments and the development of his time machine in detail. Along with that he discusses his nasty plans to bring back Hitler from the past. He also will give you a lesson on the space/time continuum. In essence how to make a time machine. Cool huh? Someone’s gotta stop him and save not only Margie but now Sandy too. Can Jim do it?
“The Yesterday Machine” was released in 1963 and was directed by Russ Marker. It is a low budget virtually unknown “B” movie written, directed and produced by Russ Marker. The only one in the movie that had any acting chops was Tim Holt (Lt. Partane). He did mostly westerns in his heyday. The pace is slow in spots and other than Holt the acting is bad. Dialogue too unless you like science lessons.
There are critics that believe it should stay in obscurity but I disagree. Although not very good there is something about it that is almost charming. A slice of 1963. Reminiscent of an old Dr. Who episode yet deep in the heart of Texas. Don’t ask me why I liked this one, I just did. Time traveling Nazi’s in Texas? I’m there.