The Goonies (film)

The Goonies is a 1985 American adventure movie directed by Richard Donner.

Synopsis
The same day that a family of notorious criminals escape jail is the last day before the Goon Docks of Astoria are to be sold away to the Astoria Country Club. The Goonies, who live in the Goon Docks, discover an old treasure map previously belonging to One-Eyed Willy, an infamous pirate with a treasure that has been long forgotten. With their last hurrah, they set off to discover the treasure hidden below Astoria to save their home, while avoiding the Fratellis and Willy's deadly booby traps along the way.

Plot
During lunch time at the Clatsop County Jail, Jake Fratelli tricks a Prison Guard into believing he's committed suicide before knocking the guard unconscious and leaving the cell. As part of their escape plan, his brother Francis Fratelli pours a trail of gasoline around the main entrance of the jail, as his mother waits in their black Jeep Cherokee XJ. As Jake enters the vehicle, Francis shoots the gasoline on the ground, forming a line of fire which blocks the initial line of cops, giving them enough time to drive away. A long police chase ensues going all around Astoria, with the cops ultimately losing the Fratellis in a local ORV beach race.

Facing foreclosure of their homes in the Goon Docks area of Astoria to an expanding country club, Michael "Mikey" Walsh tries deluding himself into preferring the move as his brother Brandon "Brand" Walsh works out. The rest of Mikey's friends–the titular "Goonies"– start showing up at their house: First, Clarke "Mouth" Devereaux arrives and teases Brand for failing his driver's test. Then Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen shows up, asking to have the gate opened for him, but Mouth makes him do the Truffle Shuffle before Mikey tells him to stop and activates a Rube Goldberg device to open the gate. Chunk proceeds to tell them about the police car chase he saw earlier, but no one believes him due to his past of telling outlandish stories. Finally, Richard "Data" Wang quite literally crashes through their front door via zip line from his upstairs window, resulting in Chunk foolishly breaking the penis off of their tabletop replica of the David sculpture. As Chunk and Mikey try fixing it, their mother stops by the house with Rosalita, a spanish-speaking woman who is there to help them with packing. Mouth offers to translate to Rosalita for Ms. Walsh (only to torment her with purposeful mistranslations), as the others clamor over fixing the statue. After Ms. Walsh and Rosalita leave for the grocery store, The Goonies decide to root around the attic to look at Mikey's dad's stored museum pieces.

Up in the attic, they discover pirate memorabilia and artifacts. While trying to stop his friends from ruining all of it, Mikey discovers a dusty old framed map written in spanish. When Brand attributes it to One-Eyed Willy, a local infamous pirate, Mikey recalls a story told to him by his father, about Willy; the story goes that One-Eyed Willy stole treasure and had an armada sent after him by the British King. There was a large war between the armada and the Inferno, with Willy eventually fleeing. He moved his ship into this cave, but ended up trapped after the armada blew up the cave walls around him, caving him, his crew and his ship in. While being trapped in the cave for multiple years, they dug tunnels and caves and crafted booby traps, and Willy eventually kills all of his crew as a precaution to protect his treasure. While nobody believes the story at first, Chunk discovers a framed newspaper about Chester Copperpot, a local explorer who claimed to have "the key to One-Eyed Willy," which sparks Mikey to propose searching for the lost treasure to save the Goon Docks, but they others initially reject the idea and quickly rush downstairs due to the doorbell buzzer in the attic going off. As Mikey is about to go downstairs, he rolls up the map and takes a doubloon, from the broken frame, which also dated back to 1632.

Mr. Perkins drops by unannounced, handing off foreclosure paperwork for Mr. Walsh. With their morale low after Mr. Perkins' visit, the Goonies are now convinced to go through with the plan to find the treasure. While casually watching tv in the living room, they tie up Brand against a sofa chair with his workout bands, and Mouth flattens his bike tires before they all ride off on their own bikes. Ms. Walsh and Rosalita later come home from the grocery store and releases Brand from his resistance bands and, upon discovering his bike tires are flat, Brand steals a children's bike from Data's sister.

Out at Ecola State Park, the Goonies use the map to match up their location with Haystack Rock, leading them in the right direction. Brand, meanwhile, is pedaling as hard as he can. Down the road are Troy Perkins, Andrea Carmichael, and Stephanie Steinbrenner, all out for a ride in Troy's Ford Mustang GT. They encounter Brand and Andy offers him a ride. Troy, however, pins his hand to the side of his car and starts driving as fast as he can. The girls try to make him stop, but are futile, and Brand is sent flying off a steep hill.

While using the doubloon to navigate the area, Mikey finds that the 3 holes in the doubloon align with the Haystack Rock, the lighthouse, and the Lighthouse Lounge, an abandoned summer restaurant. Translating the instructions on the map, they deduced that the rich stuff must be in the restaurant. As they make their way towards it, they see two people entering the building and assume that they're customers. Unphased by what sounds like gunshots (bar Chunk), the boys continue to investigate the building. They see them carrying something in a bag to the kitchen, which they assume is just food. Apart from the others, Chunk discovers an ORV in the garage with bullet holes in the trunk door. He realizes that it's the same ORV he saw from before, and runs to tell the rest of the boys as they enter the building. Inside, they meet Jake and Mama Fratelli, who play along with the boys' assumption that they were workers at the restaurant. Mama Fratelli threatens to cut off Mouth's tongue, intimidating them into silence as she heads back into the kitchen. The Goonies slowly begin to realize something is wrong and Chunk tells them about the ORV in the garage, but nobody believes him. Mikey uses an excuse of needing to use the bathroom to get into the basement, believing that a clue would be down there. While searching, he overhears a strange roaring sound. Going to investigate the source, he sees Jake abusing an "It" by throwing food at his face while it was chained to the walls. Jake leaves the room without noticing Mikey, who stays silent even when accidently sitting on a mousetrap. Mikey decides to help the poor thing by pushing the plate of food closer to his reach but is scared when he sees its face and runs back upstairs, where Brand had arrived to pull the Goonies outside while the Fratellis threaten them to never come back.

Outside, Mikey excitedly tells them about what he found. Shortly afterwards, they watch the Fratellis bring something outside which they place in their car and drive away. While hiding behind wooden logs to avoid being seen by them, they get scared when Stef and Andy suddenly arrive, having apparently ditched Troy. The younger boys go off to check out the restaurant again, while Brand makes talk with his crush. While trying to get the locked door open, Mouth talks about having naked pictures of Chunk's mom, leading Chunk to run at him, with Mouth stepping aside so Chunk would inadvertently ram the front door open. They head inside and Brand follows to wrangle them back up. Left outside by themselves, Andy and Stef are scared indoors after coming face to face with a rotting fish head on a rake. As the boys try convincing Brand to let them investigate, Andy talks him into giving the boys some time to explore in return for spending time with her. When they head downstairs, Mikey tries to show them the creature he discovered, but the Goonies all get scared and fall backwards into an adjacent room. Believing this to be the lowest point of the building, Mikey attempts to dig through the floor with a fire pick which comes to no avail. After being insulted by Mouth again, Chunk accidentally breaks a water cooler which spills water across the floor. Mikey points out sound of dripping water and realizes that there must be some sort of hole or drain that the water is going to. They subsequently find a hidden drain grate covering a passageway built into the room's fireplace. Meanwhile, Data has activated a strange machine, which begins printing fifty dollar bills, quickly determined to be fake. A newspaper nearby identifies the "owners" of the restaurant as the Fratelli criminal family who escaped jail earlier that day. Chunk, who is mad at the rest of them for not believing his warnings starts to leave, but then smells ice cream from the freezer nearby. While he looked at all of the flavours, the others notice a dead body being stored in the freezer which falls out. As they scream in terror, they hear the Fratellis arrive back home, who notice that someone may have broken in. The Goonies shove the body back into the freezer, accidentally leaving Chunk behind. They look for a way to escape and ultimately climb down into the secret passage to get away while Chunk tries to get their attention in the freezer. After the Fratellis investigate the area and notice the broken water cooler, Chunk scrambles out of the freezer, and Brand and Mikey tell him to get the police, and he proceeds to escape through a small basement window.

While starting to walk through the pathway, Stef trips and drops her glasses, which accidentally get stepped on. They ask Data if he has a light, and he proceeds to activate his "Bully Blinders" which lose their battery power after a couple seconds. After setting up a working lantern in the pathway, the Goonies discover a series of plumbing pipes that they decide to bang on to try and get attention from above ground. The pipes, which were connect to the Astoria Country Club, start causing tons of problems and mischief. The large amounts of pressure on the pipes force a water pipe to burst, and the spewing water reveals a new cavern which they escape down. Continuing down the series of tunnels while Andy starts going insane, the Goonies discover the skeleton that got crushed by a large rock. While examining the old bag next to the skeleton, they find a large bunch of candles which they took along with them (unbeknownst to them that one of them is a stick of dynamite), and a wallet which confirmed that the skeleton was that of Chester Copperpot. Data goes to the front of the long cavern to set his own booby traps so they know if someone is following them. Around the skeleton's neck, they find a copper medallion, which Mikey takes. After noticing a string buried underneath the dirt on the floor, Mikey triggers a booby trap. They then notice a series of large boulders hanging above them and start running away as they began falling. They all hurry out of danger's way, when Brand hears a sound coming from behind a large rock. He moves the rock and bats fly out of the hole it previously covered up.

Those scenes in the caverns are broken up by segments showing what happened to Chunk. As he runs to get help, he flags down a passing vehicle and explains the situation while asking to be brought to the police station. Unfortunately, the car he flagged down was the Fratellis, who take him captive in the back of their vehicle. Back at the restaurant, Chunk is interrogated by the Fratellis while being threatened by the idea of getting his hand blended. Chunk tells them that his friends are in the fireplace, which they don't believe, and after being told to "spill his guts and tell them everything," Chunk proceeds to admit past misdemeanors which he committed throughout his life (which had no relation to the current events). After sitting there listening to so many of his stories–with Jake starting to get amused by Chunk–they turn on the blender and try forcing his hand into it, but just before his hand touches the blades at the bottom, the bats from the passageway break through the grate under the fireplace and start flying around the basement.

While still traveling through the caverns, the Goonies discover and underground waterfall, with what appears to be Willy's treasure scattered around the cave walls, only to discover the coins are modern currency and that they're at the bottom of a wishing well. Troy and his friends happen to be hanging out around the wishing well, and Troy throws a coin down which gets the Goonies attention. After realizing that it was Troy, they yell for his help, and he offer to save Andy (and the Goonies) by lowering the bucket, but a quick heartfelt speech from Mikey keeps them focused on finding One-Eyed Willy's "rich stuff," and they chose to carry on. While looking for the next steps to take in their adventure, Mikey finds sets of triple-stones, which were referenced in the map. He finds that the copper medallion fits with 3 of the stones, but as he starts turing it, his arm gets trapped and it triggers another booby trap which opened a trapdoor in the floor, nearly claiming Data's life, who is only saved by his Pinchers of Peril. Data then realizes that a new tunnel starts at the bottom of the pit.

Concurring with those events, the Fratellis discover the doubloon, which has fallen out of Chunk's pocket - this confirms to the Fratellis that Chunk has been telling the truth about pirate treasure under the restaurant. They decide to keep him alive and Francis ties Chunk to a chair and leaves him in a room with their brother–the "it" from before, while they go to explore the pathway in the fireplace. As Chunk tries introducing himself to the "it", he turns towards him, revealing his deformed face while yelling at him. As Chunk gets scared and starts jumping in his chair screaming for help, the "it" gets excited and starts jumping along with him. As they watch a cooking show on tv, Chunk offers a Baby Ruth to the "it", and tries throwing it to him, but it hits off of the "it's" face and lands on the floor. In a rage, the "it" breaks his chains off the walls to grab it. While exploring the caverns, the Fratellis trigger the traps set by Data while walking on the floor, and find the skeleton with his bag empty, as well as a set of kids footprints leading away from the cavern. The "it," now fully free of his chains, introduces himself as "Sloth" and quickly befriends Chunk as they share the Baby Ruth together. Chunk, now freed of his restraints by Sloth, attempts to call the Sheriff, who doesn't believe his story due to his past of prank calling him with ludicrous crimes, but Chunk gets distracted as Sloth finds the passageway in the fireplace, and breaks the telephone cord in the process. The two of them find the room of pipes leaking and shaking, and as Sloth tries to hold one of them still, it causes more havoc to the area above.

During a quick bathroom break that the Goonies take in the caverns, Andy calls out for Brand to come see her; Brand sends Mikey in his place and Andy ends up kissing him in the dark, which Stef witnesses to her hilarity. By the time everyone is finished using the bathroom, the notice the flashlight of the Fratellis shining down the trapdoor pit and they run off. As they cross an underground river using a log connecting the two sides, Data uses his Slick Shoes to make the log slippery as he went across. As the Goonies light up more candles on their lantern, Francis and Jake both attempt to cross the log, but both end up slipping and hurting their nuts, just as the water rapids start picking up. In the next room, the Goonies find a Bone Organ, and the map tells them to play the correct notes in order to escape. They find a music staff with notes on the back of the map, and Andy (who took piano lessons when she was 4) is tasked with solving the puzzle. After a series of near fails with Data warning them of the Fratellis advancing, the pathway opens up, and everyone scrambles to safety before Francis can shoot at them. They ride down a branching waterslide that drops them into a lagoon within a large grotto, where Willy's old ship, the Inferno has been this whole time. The six of them all celebrate as the Fratellis try balancing along the edge against the walls of the Organ Room to follow them.

Climbing into the ship, they search the main floor for anything. After initially finding nothing of value, Data falls through the grates on the ship deck, opening the lower level of the ship. Still coming to a dead end, the others start getting mad at Mikey, questioning why they haven't found any gold on the ship yet, until Andy accidentally triggers a booby trap that reveals a trapdoor in the ceiling, which Mikey climbs through. In this chamber of the ship, Mikey finally discovers One-Eyed Willy and all his riches. Mikey starts talking to Willy's skeleton, before the rest of the Goonies make their way into the room. The Goonies start to gather up as much treasure that they can, but Mikey tells them to leave the treasure on the set of scales in front of Willy for him, and to take anything else. They start trying to think of a plan to avoid getting caught by the Fratellis, only for Mama Fratelli to arrive and force them to the ship deck at gunpoint.

Out on the deck, Data attempts to fight the Fratellis with his inventions mostly failing; his boxing glove punches himself in the face, but he throws the Pinchers of Peril at Francis which bites him in the crotch, and as he tries using the suction cup belt to get Mama Fratelli's gun, it pulls Data towards her, but ultimately makes her drop the gun through the deck grate. The kids are gathered up and are forced to drop all the treasure they hold, which included treasure that Mama Fratelli had found Mouth hiding in his mouth. After Andy insulted her, Mama Fratelli makes Andy to walk the plank, and forces her overboard, and Brand proceeds to jump in to her rescue. Before Stef and Mouth can be tossed into the water, Sloth and Chunk make a grand entrance by sliding down the ship's sail with a dagger. Sloth grabbed a rope and swung past Jake and Francis to grab Stef and Mouth off the plank and drop them back onto the ship deck. The rest of the Goonies make an escape off of the ship as Sloth confronted his family. Brand and Andy finally share their kiss, when they both realize that she had kissed Mikey earlier. After knocking his brothers unconscious and hanging them from a rope above the ship deck, he was initially conciliated by his mother, until he was reminded of how he was dropped by her mother in the past, which lead to him throwing Mama Fratelli overboard, and Sloth proceeded to dive into the water himself to the cheers from the Goonies.

The Fratellis, after recovering from their encounter with Sloth, loot the ship and grab as much treasure as they could, including the stuff on the set of scales, which triggers one last booby trap that forces them to drop the treasure and flee as rocks from the cavern ceiling start to fall. The Goonies find a source of natural light in a crevice in the wall. They try using the last candle to stick outside the crevice to try and get someone's attention, but upon lighting it, they realize that it's a dynamite stick. After taking cover once the dynamite exploded, it created a large enough hole in the cave walls, but it was blocked by a giant boulder. Sloth uses his back to move the boulder up so the rest of them could escape under his legs. But to Chunk's sorrow, Sloth couldn't get through himself, and seemingly was trapped in the cavern with the other Fratellis.

Out on the beach in the morning light, they are saved by a roving set of policemen. Reunited with their families, Mikey laments losing the treasure. Surprisingly, all the Fratellis made it out of the cave, and as the police rushed to put them under arrest, Chunk and the others stop the police from arresting Sloth, and he is spared from arrest, with Chunk promising he'll be part of the Cohen family from now on. Mr. Perkins asks Irving Walsh to sign off the documents to finally obtain the Goon Docks for the country club, but Rosalita starts shouting to them, as she discovered a series of precious gems hidden in Mikey's marble bag, which the Fratelli's forgot to check. With these gems procured, Mikey's father triumphantly rips up the papers, declaring they have enough money to negate the foreclosure. As they are regaling the tale of their adventure to the disbelieving press and police on Cauldron Point, they notice the Inferno, having broken free of the grotto, sailing off on its own into the horizon one last time.

Cast

 * Sean Astin as Mikey
 * Josh Brolin as Brand
 * Jeff Cohen as Chunk
 * Corey Feldman as Mouth
 * Kerri Green as Andy
 * Martha Plimpton as Stef
 * Ke Huy Quan as Data
 * John Matuszak as Sloth
 * Robert Davi as Jake
 * Joe Pantoliano as Francis
 * Anne Ramsey as Mama Fratelli
 * Lupe Ontiveros as Rosalita
 * Mary Ellen Trainor as Irene Walsh
 * Keith Walker as Irving Walsh
 * Curtis Hanson as Mr. Perkins
 * Steve Antin as Troy Perkins (Clay Greenbush as backup)
 * Paul Tuerpe as Sheriff
 * George Robotham as Prison Guard
 * Charles McDaniel as Chunk's father
 * Elaine Cohen McMahon as Chunk's mother
 * Michael Paul Chan as Data's father
 * George Nicholas McLean as Mouth's father
 * Kene Holliday as cop
 * Jeb Adams and Eric Briant Wells as Troy's friends
 * Gene Ross, Max Segar, and Newton Dennis Arnold as men in shower
 * Jack O'Leary and Patrick Cameron as reporters
 * Orwin Harvey as Tennis Player
 * Ted Grossman as FBI Man

Crew

 * Director
 * Richard Donner


 * Producers
 * Richard Donner and Harvey Bernhard


 * Story
 * Steven Spielberg


 * Screenplay
 * Chris Columbus

Frank Marshall Kathleen Kennedy
 * Executive producers
 * Steven Spielberg


 * Director of photography
 * Nick McLean


 * Production designer
 * J. Michael Riva


 * Film editor
 * Michael Kahn


 * Music score
 * Dave Grusin

Production
The Goonies was originally named "The Goon Kids" in Steven Spielberg's original story concept.

The film began principal photography on October 22, 1984. It was mostly shot in order by script, and took about five months to finish. Almost all scenes not set in the caves were shot on location in Astoria, OR; other filming locations included Cannon Beach, Ecola State Park, as well as California's Goat Rock Beach. The caves were shot on set, with Burbank's Stage 16 being used for housing the Inferno.

Donner's directing style for The Goonies was a fast and loose one, going as far as to make changes to the script on the fly. One of the most well-known facts about the movie is that the child actors were not allowed to see the large Inferno set, in order to capture honest first reactions to it on film. However, their initial reactions were so fervent and full of swears that it required a second take. Josh Brolin claims he snuck a sneak peek at the ship one day during production, however.

Many of the film's animatronics and prosthetics, such as the ones used for Sloth's makeup, were created by Burman Studios. Industrial Light & Magic also helped, notably with the five-foot replica used in the movie's final shot and with special effects and green screening. Data's many inventions were created by Special Effects artist Doyle Smiley and Special Effects Coordinator Matt Sweeney; they all worked as they were intended to.

The film has a number of deleted scenes cut from the final version. The most famous of these is the octopus scene, which is still referenced by Data in the last scene of the movie.

Adaptions
The Goonies was adapted into a novel by James Kahn, released a month before the film. A storybook also exists, as well as a number of activity and coloring books.

The Goonies has been adapted into a number of video games. Direct adaptions were released for the Nintendo Famicom and Famicom Disk Engine, the arcade VS. System, the PC-88 computer, and the Sharp X1 compute, the MSX computer, and the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC computers. A sequel to the Famicom game was later made, as The Goonies II.

LEGO Dimensions featured a level pack for The Goonies, with missions and worlds based on the movie.

It was reported that The Goonies would receive adaptions in the form of a comic mini-series, an animated cartoon on Cartoon Network, and a musical, but all of these plans were cancelled.

Sequel
The possibility of a sequel to The Goonies has existed since 2004, when Richard Donner reported interest in another story. The idea of one was debunked by multiple actors from the original. Sean Astin showed interest in one in an interview in 2007, while Corey Feldman, again, debunked a sequel in 2008.

Donner again explained interest in 2010 with the release of The Making of a Cult Classic: The Unauthorized Story of The Goonies, and claimed to have a script for it in 2014.

No news of an official sequel has been released since then, with the only "sequel" existing being The Goonies II.

Soundtrack and score
The original score for The Goonies was created by composer Dave Grusin. It borrows from other film scores, such as Superman and Adventure of Don Juan for incidental parts of the movie, both relating to the character of Sloth. The score itself wasn't officially released until 2010.

A compilation soundtrack with music featured in the movie was released alongside its release. This included singles such as "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper, "Eight Arms To Hold You" by Goon Squad, and more.

Trivia

 * According to the newspaper found in the Lighthouse Lounge basement, The Goonies takes place on the evening of October 24, 1985 (and the morning of the 25th). This date was also used in the novel adaption.