MOVIE REVIEW: The Yesterday Machine (ca. 1963~1966)

Time travel stories are some of my favorites, as it requires a talented writer to write one that works. I first understood them when I watched Back to the Future (1985), but that’s probably EVERYBODY. Sometimes the outcomes are positive while the story doesn’t quite make sense (see Back to the Future), and other times the story makes absolute sense for a science-fiction film…with unforeseen results, like in Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982), when the time-traveler becomes his own great-great-grandfather <SPOILERS for a 40-year-old movie> and Time Trackers (1989). This is one of those movies that is marketed as the former: a poorly-acted Texan drive-in movie called The Yesterday Machine from 1963. Or is it 1965? Or 1966? We’ll get into that as we explore the film.

When two teenagers — majorette Margie De Mar (Linda Jenkins, Loose Ends) and Howie Ellison (Jay Ramsey, in his only known credit) — lose their way in the backwoods, they come under attack by Confederate soldiers. Margie goes missing, but Howie is shot and nearly dies. Tabloid reporter Jim (James Britton, in his only known credit) is having a rough day, as the attending Dr. Blake (Bob Brown, the narrator for “Biography” [TV]), is a Civil War buff. and recognizes the ballistics as a mini-ball, like the ones he dug out of trees when he was a boy in the Carolinas 40 years ago. There’s no Civil War reenactor troupes in the area, so why would someone go thru the trouble of casting mini-balls to shoot someone? And why did he get assigned THIS story the day his long-awaited vacation is supposed to start?

“This koo-koo caper just got too koo-koo for me!” — a frightened Sandy holds on to Jim for protection as he brandishes a handgun.

The cops as led by Lt. Partane (Tim Holt, Stagecoach [1939], the Treasure of the Sierra Madre [1948]) note that Margie is still missing and that if Jim wants to know more about her relationship with Howie, he should visit Margie’s sister Sandy (singer-actress Ann Pellegrino, who also contributed to the movie’s original soundtrack). She’s a lounge singer, and is willing to help Jim investigate her sister’s disappearance. The two drive out to the country where the car was found (it’s not there anymore, towed away for evidence by police) and they roam about. They are beset by handsy hillbillies in Confederate costume (??), so our protagonists run off. Midway through their escape, they disappear into thin air…and reappear in the same place in the year 1789. You can tell because the first person they meet is a young man wearing a tricorne hat and runs away shouting “WITCHCRAFT” when Jim lights a cigarette. Sandy starts getting hysterical so Jim slaps her a bit to bring her to her senses (like a postwar 20th-Century American man is wont to do) and they go looking for help, but soon fade into nothingness…

…und zen, all your gains in your aggressive war vill be for naught! Ve shall return through our wunderwaffen — ze Internet!

…only to reappear in the laboratory of Nazi scientist Prof. Ernest von Hauser (stage actor Jack Herman, The Naked Witch [1961], Beyond the Time Barrier [1960]). It seems he had invented an atomic-powered time machine (!!) to change the outcome of WW2 — to rescue Adolf Hitler from his fate and preserve the Third Reich with Nazi wunderwaffen forever! He’s also the one that captured Margie, and how both Jim and Sandy are in his clutches. How will they escape? Escape is affected with reluctant help from Prof. von Hauser’s Nubian slave girl Didiyarma (actress Olga Powell); they beat the guards, damaged the machine, and defeated Prof. von Hauser. When the cops showed up, Lt. Partane went in and found the Nazi professor still alive — and ready to kill! The lieutenant shot the professor and he fell into his own time machine, disappearing to an unknown time period. Then Partane damaged the machine further, causing it to explode. Partane then justifies destroying the machine (flooding the surrounding countryside with radioactivity) with jingoistic phrasing and walks off to stage right, with the male lead nodding in guidance to the audience — as if that was a sufficient answer.

The sole Black person in the film, the Nubian slave Didiyarma.

CHOICE CUTS

• PRICELESS QUOTES: Delivering the most feel-good line of the movie and failing to make anyone feel good, Lt. Partane said “Yesterday should be left alone, because today the world has enough problems. Just trying to make sure we have a tomorrow.”
• PRICELESS QUOTES: When he gets an eyeful of the new female accounting clerk, Jim says, “The accounting department is always coming up with…interesting figures”.
• CONTINUITY ERROR: while the movie is listed as released in 1963, it apparently features vehicles that wouldn’t be produced until 2 years after release date. This means the movie was made roughly around 1964~5 which leads to other release date estimates of 1965 or 1966. There’s got to be a reason why this film was pre-dated!
• Singer-actress Ann Pellegrino, who plays lounge singer Sandy de Mar, was good enough to sing “Leave Me Alone” (which is a bluesy bop) but not to do her own lines. She is dubbed throughout, and the quality is obnoxious.
• I understand majorette uniforms were different in the Sixties (nowadays MOST majorette uniforms are spangly leotards without skirts), and I understand why Margie with her very high hem was at center frame in the opening minutes of the film. Sex sells, baby!
• If the Nazi professor’s machine pulls things through time, I understand the Confederate soldiers. If you take into consideration the rotational position of the Earth at different times in history, I understand how the Egyptian Nubian Didiyarma came to be in his employ!
• RIP Didiyarma, loved your accent!
• Prof. von Hauser’s explanation for time travel was a wild one: summarized, it’s “go fast enough, you go back in time”. One might say this goes with Back to the Future rules, but speed only kinetically powered the Flux Capacitor — it wasn’t the sole driving force for time travel (pun mightily intended).
• Interesting that one of the men who encountered Prof. von Hauser’s prior work (the aging machine found at the concentration camp) at the end of the Second World War 20 years earlier happens to run into the same Nazi scientist responsible for it? In America, of all places? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Operation Paperclip, that’s how.
• Not only was the Nazi professor able to stay in America, he was able to pull together funding AND access nuclear material for an atomic-powered generator. I see why he was chosen during Operation Paperclip—the man built an atomic-powered generator supposedly BY HIMSELF.