The Yesterday Machine (The Mads)

Film Year:  1963

Genre:  Science Fiction

Director:  Russ Marker

Starring:  Tim Holt, James Britton, Jack Herman, Ann Pellegrino, Robert Bob Kelly

Special Guest:  Beth "Beez" McKeever

The Movie

I'm all for the influence of the Twilight Zone but even that can go too far at times.  The Yesterday Machine is a small independent production from 1963 that takes that patented "weird thing that disrupts the mundane with the abnormal" concepts that fuel a lot of Twilight Zone classics and tries to make a movie out of it.  However Twilight Zone episodes are a half hour, The Yesterday Machine is not.  It does script itself like it was meant to be a half hour long and when they decided to make a full length film out of it just decided to pad the shit out of it instead of reformatting the plot.

This movie has a couple getting lost in the woods and the boyfriend turns up soon after unable to explain where his girlfriend Margie had gone.  All attempts to find the woman end up with cold trails, though Margie's sister Sandy refuses to give up, venturing out into the woods with reporter Jim Crandell.  Sandy and Jim soon find that they've been flung through time and wind up in the laboratory of a Nazi scientist who intends to use his time portal to pluck Adolph Hitler from history and continue the Third Reich.

There's this sci-fi movie from about ten years ago that I watched on Shudder once called Coherence which was low budget, yet high concept idea where they confined the characters to a single setting and alluded to science fiction shenanigans going on outside a single house, where versions of the house from parallel universes with the same people in it appeared around it, which was a fairly smart way to use the house as multiple locations while also using it as an isolated location cut off from the rest of the world.  Likewise there is another movie I watched on Tubi not long after called Timetrap which utilized a group of actors in a cave set who discover time is rapidly moving outside while they utilize that single set as their primary dramatic space.  These are examples of movies that use limited resources to their advantage to explore big ideas from character grounded in a position where they only vaguely understand it.  Some of these movies are better than others, but there is something admirable about what they do.

The Yesterday Machine feels like it's trying to do that sort of idea, utilizing low budget to its advantage for a mysterious high concept premise.  Only it's in the 60's and worse.

I kind of like what The Yesterday Machine is going for.  I would like it better if it were doing it well mind you, but there is something here that it's playing with that's worth exploring.  The idea of independent filmmakers utilizing a forest as a setting for a mysterious presence in it that creates this sort of Bermuda Triangle effect where characters can get lost and try and war against the supernatural in an attempt to find their way home.  That's begging for a better movie to be made out of it from indie filmmakers.  In fact indie filmmakers did make a better movie out of it.  It was called The Blair Witch Project and it came out in 1999.

As mentioned above though, The Yesterday Machine is more Twilight Zone fantasy sci-fi than horror, so while it's trying to keep the audience in the dark of its premise, it's not trying to frighten.  The film feels so Twilight Zone influenced that it feels like lead actor James Britton is trying very hard to imitate Rod Serling with his performance, maybe with a hint of Ronald Reagan.  The movie seems uncertain if the audience will understand it though so it tries to move slow enough for them to keep up and spends lengthy sequences of its runtime to explain exactly what it's getting at.  It doesn't think very highly of its audience's intelligence so it's feeding them full meals of exposition bringing the entire film crashing to a halt.

It's kind of a shame, because I wanted to like this movie.  I got what it was going for and it was a cool idea.  It doesn't respect itself or the people watching it enough to be an actual story rather than a concept that it spells out on a chalkboard for people to see.  That's a waste of an idea.

The Riff

The Yesterday Machine is a whole hell of a lot of padding and it's an uphill battle to make that entertaining.  While this entry in the Mads line-up does get challenged quite a bit by the movie itself, I think Trace and Frank do about as well as they can with it.  It's not all sunshine and roses, as when scenes tend to drone on I had a tendency to drift off, but when new scenes began and I snapped back to attention I always noted that Trace and Frank were doing quite exceptionally.  Gags are sharp and with gusto and while they do peddle the too often treaded "This is boring" riff type that I hate so much, The Yesterday Machine is legitimately boring and it's definitely something that needs to be addressed.  Chris even mentions up top that he edited this film down from its original eighty-five minute runtime to the version seen here (which is about sixty-five to seventy minutes) because of just how padded the movie was, but everyone assures us that we didn't lose anything important.  I believe them, though I have to wonder...how was there more of this movie?  And how was it more boring than what they kept?

Trace and Frank are also a bit tongue-tied during this stream and flub a handful of lines.  This begins a small running gag of "We'll fix it in post" that they laugh to themselves about, knowing full well that this is a live stream.  But they did do a digital re-edit for the download version of the last show, so maybe they're half-serious?  I'm watching a digital download version and the blemishes are here in their full glory, so there is no post-work done on this one.

Probably my favorite laugh of this riff was at the very end, where Trace jokes "Let's watch that again" and as the movie ends it jumps back to the first frame of the movie and Trace screams "I WAS JOKING!"  Great laugh to end this riff on.

Our Q&A guest tonight is another alum from Mystery Science Theater 3000.  We have the prop diva extraordinaire/Steffi the "NO BARK!" babysitter Beth "Beez" McKeever in the room tonight.  A lot of the fan questions are generated in her direction asking about props and costumes she's made for the show.  Luckily Beez came more than prepared with trusty visual aides, and she has costume sketches and prop photos at the ready.  She, Trace, and Frank also briefly talk about the video game Darkstar which they had all worked on before the topic turns more toward movies.  Beez professes admiration for the costumes in Cruella and Bram Stoker's Dracula, they all talk about classic movies they haven't seen to which Beez drops the bombshell that she hasn't seen The Godfather and Trace, Frank, and Chris continually pressure her to give it a shot.  Beez in turn presses them to talk a bit about movies that made them film fanatics, where Frank talks fondly about The Incredible Shrinking Man (which is outstanding, if anybody who reads this hasn't seen it) while Chris says Ghostbusters causing Frank to yell "God you're young!"  Edited Note:  This stream happened mere days before the death of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, the news of which just broke mere hours before I posted this page.  Ghostbusters was a huge part of my childhood as well, and Reitman has even more films under his belt that have earned my respect, such as Stripes, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Evolution.  R.I.P. to this legend.

(Interjecting my own answer into this, anybody who knows me knows I'm a Godzilla fanatic, and I owe a lot of my interest in film or niche cinema in general to the Showa Godzilla series, while I attribute interest in expanding to even darker corners of cinema to MST3K itself and also MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs)

Chris also backs up his bringing up Ghostbusters to talk a bit about Ghostbusters:  Afterlife, which he absolutely loved.  I didn't like it quite as much as him, though I will say it's probably the most enjoyable film in the series since the original.  Frank dismisses it out of loyalty to his friend Paul Feig, who had directed the 2016 Ghostbusters film with Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, but says on Chris's recommendation he'll give it a shot when he doesn't have to pay for it.  Frank does discuss a few movies he has seen recently that he enjoyed like Nightmare Alley, House of Gucci, and The Last Duel (I back up his recommendations for Nightmare Alley and The Last Duel, though House of Gucci is a bit more of a mellower "It's fine" thumbs up from me).  Beez talks about her love of The French Dispatch and Wes Anderson in general (Not my tempo personally, but Wes Anderson fans will definitely have fun).  They close out talking about the new Beatles documentary and Beez has a few stories about meeting Prince.

The Yesterday Machine is a bit of a slog which might be problematic for some fans who like their bad movies with less talk and more action.  There are interesting elements to it which elevated the experience just enough for me to say it was worthwhile watching it, and Trace and Frank kept the commentary just colorful enough to keep me entertained.  It's not the most memorable experiment of the Mads but it's worth watching if only to see a wonderful roundtable with Beez McKeever, who is always a delight.  This was a fun show for me and I am probably more enthusiastic about it than I probably should be with that particular movie at the center.

Good