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Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot
Monday, February 6, 2006
See What's Become Of Me
Now Playing: THE YESTERDAY MACHINE
After more than a week on vacation, I've had the opportunity to watch some batshit-crazy movies. Part of the thrill of watching Crappy Movies is knowing that, every once in awhile, I'm going to come across something so obscure and bizarre that it almost turns me off contemporary films for good. Certainly there's nothing being made today, be it independently or at the major Hollywood studios, that could duplicate the strangeness of 1963's THE YESTERDAY MACHINE.

It, not surprisingly, wasn't made in Hollywood anyway, but rather Texas, which also was the home of notorious schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, who gave us so-called classics like MARS NEEDS WOMEN and ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES (sic). Buchanan was quite likely an associate, a partner or even a mentor to Russ Marker, who wrote, produced, directed and composed songs for THE YESTERDAY MACHINE, a very talky and slow-moving science fiction movie that isn't completely uninteresting.

Howard, a male college cheerleader, and his baton-twirling girlfriend Margie (she shakes her hips and twirls to some groovy rock-and-roll while Howie works on his car) break down on a country road and cut through the woods to find help. They're astonished to run into two men dressed in Civil War gear who shoot at them. Howie takes a slug in the back and collapses back on the road, but Margie completely disappears.

Jim Crandall (James Britton), an obnoxious, wisecracking newspaper reporter anxious to get away on his first vacation in three years, is convinced by his boss to poke around the scene of the shooting and find a story. Lieutenant Partane (former B-movie cowboy star Tim Holt) isn't much help, so Jim fetches Margie's sister Sandra (Ann Pellegrino), a nightclub singer, to explore the woods with him. While fleeing an attacker, the two pass through some sort of warp that deposits them in the 18th century, where they encounter a horseman who confuses Jim's lighter for witchcraft.

Another "poof" and Crandall and Sandy appear in the workshop of Professor Ernst von Hauser (Jack Herman), a Nazi who escaped the fall of the Third Reich and is continuing his experiments more than twenty years later in the basement of an abandoned old house in Texas! Astonishingly, Crandall isn't surprised to see von Hauser, since Partane had miraculously just told him a story of invading a concentration camp at the end of World War II and seeing the results of von Hauser's time experiments. What a coincidence.

Prof. von Hauser sends his two Nazi lackeys and his Egyptian female slave to lock Sandy up with Margie, while he delivers what is simultaneously the movie's highlight and lowlight. Actor Herman's acting is way out of control as he goes on for what seems like hours, plowing his way through pages and pages of technical dialogue that is supposed to sound scientific, but is really just gibberish. Considering himself to be more brilliant than Einstein, von Hauser even scribbles his formulas on the blackboard while Jim scratches his head and the audience fights sleep. I don't know what Marker was thinking in piling all this deadly exposition into one clump that must consist of at least ten minutes of screen time. Maybe he thought we'd be fascinated by his scientific acumen, as if we'd really believe he might have something to this time machine thing.

The time machine itself consists of a bank of cheap metal computer equipment on the wall, a regular wooden chair, and four glowing light poles around it. Besides the brief appearance of the Rebel soldiers and that quick spin to 1787, Marker never uses the time machine. Instead of creating some creative romps through time, Marker merely writes an easy escape for Jim and the women from their cells and has Jim blast their way out of the lab, which opens to a trapdoor located in the house's backyard cemetary.

Shot in black-and-white with an original music score that popped up a few years later in Buchanan's classic ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS, THE YESTERDAY MACHINE gets points for ambition, but loses some for its inert middle act and Marker's failure to provide any dramatic punch, even on his miniscule budget. It's still no worse and maybe even a little better than the more famous Buchanan's handiwork--a backhanded compliment, to be sure.

Posted by Marty at 11:00 PM CST
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