The Goonies

Richard Donner built an entire set to serve a single reaction shot. The pirate ship Inferno and the water-filled cavern around it went up full size on Stage 16 in Burbank, and the set was kept from the child actors until the camera rolled. By Donner’s account they backed the kids into the water and set the cameras; on action they knew what they would see but not what it would look like. The astonishment on screen is the first sight of the set, not a performance. For the ship at a distance, ILM studied the Balclutha, a surviving sailing vessel in San Francisco, stained silk sails with coffee and tea to age them, and extended the masts with matte paintings. The film also leaves a thread hanging: Data tells a reporter that the octopus was very scary, but that sequence was shot and cut. Donner’s reason was that it was bad; he kept the line because he liked the mystery. The house is in Astoria, the Fratelli hideout was built for the film in Ecola State Park, and the beach they surface onto is Goat Rock in California. A good fit if you want a climax whose best moment is an unrehearsed reaction. Not for you if a closing line about an octopus nobody saw counts as a defect.