It "appears to have played Texas drive-ins as late as 1974" but was perhaps not shown outside that state. 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. Reception Film historian Fraser A. Sherman places The Yesterday Machine into a category of science fiction movies typified by "Time travel by suspended animation, enhanced sleep or the Einsteinian effects of faster-than-light travel." He writes that while other categories exist, "Changing history is a relatively minor part of big- and small-screen time travel stories." While the theme of changing history through time travel is minor, the few critics who have written about the film have not been impressed by its relative novelty. Senns says that "The talky script remains deadly dull, and nothing even remotely resembling action takes place." 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. Senn's conclusion is that "The Yesterday Machine turns out to be a time-travel film that deserves to be lost in the past." In a short review, critic Donald C. Wills proposes that the film has "Two possible themes here: How SF Movies Revive the Nazis, and How Bad Can a Movie Be? (Not much worse, assuredly, than this one). The first half here is dull 'teaser' stuff; Herman's campily colorful mad physicist enlivens the latter half, when the movie becomes comically 'ambitious.'" Critic Paul Gaita of Allmovie pans the film. 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." Viewers who rate films on internet websites don't find The Yesterday Machine to be any better than do the professional critics. Rateyourmusic users give it 2.97 out of 5 stars, although the rating is based on only five viewer ratings; the website calls it the 627th best film of 1963. At Letterboxd, 42 viewers give