Inmates are the new test subjects of the future. The test; a newly created time machine that continues to disintegrate its subjects. Krane, a convicted murderer, thinks she’s next through the incinerator, only to discover her voyage a success, landing her in the late 1700’s Chickamauga Wars at a small town in Tennessee where a constant pillage of a brothel brings her to the front lines. But it isn’t long until she discovers there’s more to this town than just the war…

SYNOPSIS:

Kayla Krane is a convicted murderer serving a life sentence for murdering her own father.

Krane was responsible for the murder of her father, a police officer, after her long history of abuse erupted into a murderous rage. And what happens to anyone who kills a cop, even if he’s a ripe piece of trash? They go to prison. And what happens when prisons are so over populated you need to thin the herds? You make a law that allows private and sanctioned scientific testing on life sentenced inmates. Cop killers get put to the front of the line for the most dangerous and unexpected experiments, which is exactly what happens to Krane as she’s next to get churned through “the machine”.

Scientists believe they have figured out how to travel through the space-time-continuum in a way that allows for “travelers” to go forward or backwards in time. However, they have no real proof if it works, only the insurmountable proof of splattered and disintegrated bodies that continue to pile up at the lab. The inmates have their own theories about “the machine”; that it’s a government ruse to kill unwanted inmates.

Imagine Krane’s surprise when her walk through the valley of death actually works. She travels in time back to the late 1700’s in the midst of the Chickamauga War in Tennessee where Natives and Colonial Americans rage on in savage skirmishes and pillages across the entire state.

Krane finds herself in a brothel in Tallassee in the midst of the John Sevier pillages. Her disguise doesn’t last long when she ends up making friends with one of the local young ladies of lust, Evernee, who Krane thinks resembles her younger self. Krane is quickly unveiled to an entirely different culture and world, through the ladies stories of men beating, raping, and even murdering some of the women and the laws that keep those very men protected. This forces Krane to spill the beans of who she is, why she’s there and what happened. The women think she’s crazy, until a scuffle breaks out with some of the local lads trying to get off in a more sinister way… and she ends up killing one.

Back to square one… Krane soon realizes she just killed a local law enforcement officer… again…. But before her comeuppance, a Native raid led by Dragging Canoe breaks out in the town.

Mist trails in, darkness spreads, and the war isn’t the only thing that pays a visit… as Krane and her new lady friends fight their way through the battle field, a new threat, a darker more sinister threat moves in to kill them all.

One Upon a Time in the Past is a horror, thriller that resembles the likes of From Dusk until Dawn mixed with Bone Tomahawk, sharing elements from 12 Monkeys and Unforgiven. Where the initial thriller of time travel, odd prison sci-fi and torture take a fast 180 back to the wild west where war is met with a supernatural terror.