Various sources give the film's release date as 1963, 1965, and 1966 In the story, a newspaper reporter, a nightclub singer, and the singer's sister fall into the hands of a mad Nazi physicist who has developed a time travel machine with which he intends to snatch Adolf Hitler from the past, teleport him into the present, and forever bring the world under the brutal domination of the Third Reich.

College drum majorette Margie De Mar twirls her baton as boyfriend Howie Ellison, a cheerleader, tries unsuccessfully to repair his broken-down car so that they can get to a football game on time.

He tells Jim that at the end of World War II his army unit had liberated an unusual concentration camp, in which the prisoners were all young and well-fed.

His plan is to bring Hitler back from wartime Germany to the present-day US so that the Führer - who will become immortal during teleportation - can forever rule the world.

Regional films in general "were conceived, produced and often distributed entirely in corners of the country not typically associated with the entertainment industry - from the backwoods of Utah to the bayous of Louisiana to the outer boroughs of New York.

Made with little regard to genre convention, or in some cases even any basic knowledge of filmmaking, by the 1970s" - when The Yesterday Machine was still playing in drive-in theatres - "these regional indies were at the vanguard of horror cinema."

Such horror and science fiction films were made on low budgets and usually with production crews and actors who were local to the shooting location, in this case, in and around Dallas TX.

[5][1] The automobile enthusiast users of the Internet Movie Cars Database dispute the 1963 date, having spotted in the film a 1964 Rambler American, a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500, and a 1965 Dodge Dart.

[7][8][9] Marker told Albright in an interview that he got the idea for The Yesterday Machine shortly after World War II from reading press reports of Nazi super-weapons that had been planned but never built.

Besides writing the script - as well as producing and directing the film - Marker also wrote the lyrics to "Leave Me Alone," which Pellegrino sings on-camera during the nightclub sequence.

[1] In the same interview, Marker said that the film was financed by several millionaires of his acquaintance, all World War II veterans, who "thought it was a damn good idea for a movie."

[1] The Yesterday Machine has been distributed on DVD for home viewing several times, including as a single-film disc from Origin Arts, issued on 20 March 2007, and as a double feature with Destination Space (1959) by Alpha Video on 28 April 2015.

For example, "The old Nazi scientist takes up nearly fifteen minutes of screen time alternately raving about the Third Reich or offering up lengthy, ridiculous scientific explanation" of how "super spectronic relativity" works.

He writes, "The camp value of this off-kilter science fiction effort (...) is seriously undermined by a dreary pace, comparable to a period educational film.

This analogy reaches a terminal point when, late in the film, the scientist pulls out a chalkboard and begins drawing diagrams to help the captured reporter understand the workings of his machine and time travel in general.