“Showdown in Yesteryear” is an exceptionally-pokey indie Old West fantasy about an aged John Wayne-worshipping stable boy who finds himself transported back to @1880, Dogwood Pass.

It’s ambitious enough, making use of an Ohio “Old West” town attraction, but clumsily slow, formulaically-obvious and amateurishly-acted, with many of the players performers from that attraction — apparently.

Darryl (Jeff Grennell) is a just-lost-his-gal (Michelle Snyder), just-laid-off hand at Steve Callahan’s (Mike Montgomery) ranch hand who never finishes that noose he’s a’tyin’ when he spies this old doorway in the middle of a pasture. He walks through it, and danged if he isn’t in Dogwood Pass, sometime after “Dr. Bell” invented the telephone.

It takes him a while to figure out he hasn’t stumbled into a theme park, to see a man gunned down by a no-good hombre (Jesse Marciniak) in a poker game dispute, to intervene and keep “The Beast” from shooting anybody else.

It takes the sheriff (Steve Graf) a while to figure out this fellow calling himself John Wayne or just “Duke” has a laminated driver’s licence with the name “Daryl Dumwoody” on it, that he’s got this cell phone in his pocket “from the FUTURE,” he insists.

“No service.”

Daryl may frantically hunt for “the door” because “I don’t belong here,” but we know he’s going to kit himself out in gunfighter-gear, court the shopkeeper (Debra Lamb) and start manning up to the troubles facing this town, thanks to its murderous Boss Orson (Vernon Wells).

Director Aaron Bratcher (“Pawn’s Volition”) takes forever to get this picture underway, wasting scene after scene with drone shots establishing the windmill-covered “modern” West, never letting a single shot of Daryl’s first tumble on his first-ever horseback-riding lesson suffice when he can cover it from three angles.

Once we finally get to the Old West, “Showdown” slips straight into “stranger in town sets things right” formula, and becomes more of an actor’s picture. And no, that doesn’t improve matters.

Rating: unrated, violence, some profanity

Cast: Jeff Grennell, Vernon Wells, Debra Lamb, Jesse Marciniak, Steve Graff, Michelle Snyder and Mike Montgomery.

Credits: Directed by Aaron Bratcher, scripted by Gregory Lamberson. A Lion Heart release.

Running time: 1:53