THE GOONIES [1985]
Directed by Richard Donner
USA / Color / English

Mikey Walsh and Brandon Walsh are brothers whose family is preparing to move because developers want to build a golf course in the place of their neighborhood — unless enough money is raised to stop the construction of the golf course, and that’s quite doubtful. But when Mikey stumbles upon a treasure map of the famed “One-Eyed” Willy’s hidden fortune, Mikey, Brandon, and their friends Lawrence “Chunk” Cohen, Clark “Mouth” Devereaux, Andrea “Andy” Carmichael, Stefanie “Stef” Steinbrenner, and Richard “Data” Wang, calling themselves The Goonies, set out on a quest to find the treasure in hopes of saving their neighborhood.

The treasure is in a cavern, but the entrance to the cavern is under the house of evil thief Mama Fratelli and her sons Jake Fratelli, Francis Fratelli, and the severely disfigured Lotney “Sloth” Fratelli. Can The Goonies survive Willie’s boobytrapped cavern, the Fratelli crooks, and each other in order to find the treasure and save their homes?

Rated PG; 114 min.

Director Richard Donner has a cameo as the gray-haired sheriff on the quads as the Goonies exit the cave with the ship.

The Goonies Oath that was cut out goes as follows: “I will never betray my goon dock friends / We will stick together until the whole world ends / Through heaven and hell, and nuclear war / Good pals like us, will stick like tar / In the city, or the country, or the forest, or the boonies / I am proudly declared a fellow Goony.”

The pirate ship was entirely real. All the shots were filmed in the ship. After the film, it was offered to anyone who would take it. No one wanted it, so the ship was scrapped.

According to Sean Astin, he was allowed to keep the treasure map used in the film. Several years later his mother discovered it, thought it was just a crinkled piece of paper, and threw it in the trash.

When the boys are sitting in the living room watching MTV, they weren’t actually watching the Cyndi Lauper “Good Enough” video, which was developed six months after filming wrapped up.

The cast was not allowed to see the pirate ship before the scene was shot. When they did see it, some of the kids said “Holy shit!” The scene had to be re-shot without them cursing.

When rocks are falling from the cave ceiling, Jonathan Ke Quan (Data) screams “Holy S-H-I-T!” He said he spelled the expletive because his mother made him promise not to use any bad language in the movie.

“Shit” or “bullshit”is uttered 19 times, not counting the line “Holy S-H-I-T!”

When Chunk and Sloth head down through the grate to follow the gang and the Fratellis, Sloth is wearing an Oakland Raiders T-Shirt. John Matuszak, who played Sloth, was a former Oakland Raiders football player.

RICHARD DONNER
Working briefly as an actor in the late 1950s, American director Richard Donner first wielded the megaphone for a group of TV commercials, then graduated to the weekly western Wanted: Dead or Alive. Some of Donner’s best early work was concentrated on the fantasy anthology Twilight Zone, including the imperishable 1963 episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Donner also worked for Hanna-Barbera, directing several episodes of “Danger Island”, a component of the 1968 kid’s series The Banana Splits; there was, however, very little that was “kiddie” about “Mystery Island,” a hallucinatory symphony of hand-held camerawork. A film director since 1961 Donner turned to movie work full time with 1968’s Salt and Pepper. The Omen (1976), a demonic-possession opus, was Donner’s first major moneymaker, leading to his directing assignment on the first Superman film in 1978. Superman was popular enough to inspire three sequels, the first of which contained so much uncredited Donner-directed footage that the director was compelled to sue. Donner has struck gold at the box office several times since 1978, notably with the three action-packed Lethal Weapon films starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and more recently with another Gibson vehicle, Maverick (1994) —allmovie guide