Caddyshack (1980) on Netflix
At Bushwood Country Club, caddie Danny Noonan wants the caddie scholarship that Judge Elihu Smails, a club founder, awards. A rich newcomer and a destructive gopher cause trouble.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.2/10134,472 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
Seventeen and unsure about college, Danny Noonan caddies at Bushwood Country Club, an exclusive course, and fears a future in a menial job. Judge Elihu Smails is one of the club's founders and controls its caddie scholarship, so Danny offers to carry his bag. Danny's usual player, Ty Webb, is a relaxed golfer whose father helped start the club. Al Czervik, a rich developer, arrives as a guest, and his manner irritates Smails. Carl Spackler, a greenskeeper, is ordered to kill a gopher that construction on Czervik's neighboring land drove onto the course. Smails throws a putter in anger and injures an elderly guest; Danny takes the blame to win his favor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Caddyshack (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The scene that begins when Ty Webb's golf ball crashes into Carl Spackler's shack was not in the original script: director Harold Ramis added it after realizing that two of his biggest stars, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, did not appear in a scene together, and the three wrote it over lunch.
- Bill Murray improvised much of the "Cinderella story" scene from just two lines of stage direction, hitting flowers with a grass whip while fantasizing aloud about winning the Masters; he was with the production only six days and his lines were largely unscripted.
- The explosions staged for the climax of the film were reported to the nearby Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport by an incoming pilot, who suspected that a plane had crashed.
- The production became infamous for the amount of drug use on set, with supporting actor Peter Berkrot describing cocaine as "the fuel that kept the film running."
- The scene in which Al Czervik hits Judge Smails in the genitals with a struck golf ball happened to Harold Ramis for real, on what he said was the second of his two rounds of golf, at a nine-hole public course.
- Cindy Morgan was legally blind without her contact lenses, which she could not wear near the pool, so the crew led her to the diving board and carefully directed her up the ladder before a professional diver took over for her character's dive.
- The film was inspired by writer and co-star Brian Doyle-Murray's memories of caddying at Indian Hill Club in Winnetka, Illinois; his brothers Bill and John Murray and director Harold Ramis had also worked as caddies as teenagers.
- Denmark was the only place outside the United States where Caddyshack was initially a hit, and the distributor there had cut 20 minutes from it to emphasize Bill Murray's role.
