Nate and Hayes (1983)

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This swashbuckling adventure romp, which I hadn't seen in over thirty years, best confirmed my level of enjoyment for it. Better known as Savage Islands, this less known film, is an Indiana Jones at sea, with Tommy Lee Jones, again in top form, as a notorious pirate, misinterpreted as a bad guy by many. With an old score to settle, once a friend and partner, now a sworn and ruthless enemy (Oz's Max Phipps, a late great Aussie acting import) has Jones locked up where he reflects on his memoirs and his lucrative profitable past, to a biographer and we're taken back in time to a young couple (O Keefe, a reverend, and his lovely bride to be Seagrove) who Jones helped to exact revenge, on Phipps, after wiping out a village and taking his bride to be, but of course reclaims her, only Phipps had survived. There are some beautiful sunny sea island shots, and the film is rich on atmosphere, filmed in he Pacific, where Seagrove is one fine treasure herself, where she also, clearly has the hots for Jones. Jones has never been hotter in a film, actually, the bearded look really suits him. Phipps is fun as the villain, and there's great choreographed action and scenery, in this very overlooked film. O Keefe's performance is too stiff, or some would say comically overdone, as a reverend, though I've never really thought much of him as an actor, except for Split Image, etc. A treasure of a viewing, with the scariest flying fox you'll ever see.

I saw Nate and Hayes back in the day, in the darkness of the theater. It was fun, but the memory of Raiders of the Lost Ark (which was certainly responsible for this film's existence) was too fresh, and this minor film suffered in comparison. Though Nate and Hayes was competently made, and had it's charms, it was obviously a TV movie that somehow made it up to the big screen. I think that if they'd had a bit more money to spend, the filmmakers could have created a film just as good as Disney's recent pirate adventures. With more varied camera-work, a few more creative action bits, better costumes, and richer cinematography, the same screenplay could have been made into a smash hit classic. In fact, most of the big hits of the past 3 decades have basically just been slick and shiny remakes of little films like this one. And Tommy Lee Jones makes a fantastic Pirate, Texas accent and all!

This is a great movie, not necessarily the most historically accurate film, but its still a really good pirate movie. I'm not sure of the year this movie was supposed to take place but at the beginning they are trying to sell thirty-thirty lever-action rifles... which didn't come out until the early eighteen hundreds. throughout the rest of the movie there are a bold mixture of period firearms that don't really let you get a grasp on when this is supposed to take place. What I really found interesting was that it had a scene in the beginning with the rope bridge that was amazingly close to the famous scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... especially since this movie came out a year before Temple of Doom. No matter what... it's a good watch.

One gets the impression that Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were in the adjoining office at Universal Studios with drinking glasses up against the wall, listening in on the story conferences for Nate and Hayes. Both this wonderful adventure film and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were released the same year by the same studio, both have rope bridges hanging over ravines, cults and the feats of daring do... But Nate and Hayes is much more fun (for a smaller budget) and in the spirit of those serials...