(1963)
Written and Directed by Russ Marker
Starring Tim Holt, James Britton, Ann Pellegrino, Linda Jenkins, Jack Herman, Jay Ramsey, Olga Powell
IMDB Entry
Hollywood is cruel. It's the "what have you done lately?" attitude: if you had a few flops, or if you're growing older, you can end up forgotten. Tim Holt was a successful cowboy actor in the 30s and 40s, and appeared in four legitimate classics, but by the 50s, his star had faded.** He ended up taking roles in low-budget films and one of his final appearances was in The Yesterday Machine.
Howie Ellison (Jay Ramsey) and cheerleader*** Sandy Del Mar (Ann Pellegrino) have their car break down on the way to a football game. Looking for help, they are shot at by a pair of Confederate soldiers. Howie gets help, but Sandy remains missing. Reporter Jim Crandell (James Britton), aided to Police lieutenant Fred Partane (Tim Holt) track them down to a secluded farmhouse, the headquarters of ex-Nazi scientist Professor Ernst von Hauser.**** Von Hauser has invented a time machine and it planning to go back to save Hitler.*****
The movie is pretty pedestrian and the acting no more than serviceable. Of note is Olga Powell as Didiyama, an Egyptian slave of the pharaohs, who von Hauser has brought back.
Holt only appears in a handful of scenes, lending his name to be the only recognizable star. The movie was a local production, where small studios would make a film for small theaters far from the big cities and most of the actors appeared in nothing else. The film is certainly not a classic, but still manages to be entertaining.
As for Tim Holt, this was pretty much the end of the line. He had a guest spot a few years later on The Virginian, and appeared in one more film before his death.
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*Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
**Despite the fact that Westerns were a big thing.
***The film begins with a pre-credit sequence of her twirling a baton for no particular reason.
****The fall of the Third Reich created vast unemployment among mad scientists.
*****Of course.
