Little Monsters
| Little Monsters | |
|---|---|
Howie Mandel as Maurice and Fred Savage as Brian
|
|
| Directed by | Richard Alan Greenberg |
| Produced by |
John A. Davis Jack Grossberg Andrew Licht Jeffrey A. Mueller |
| Written by |
Terry Rossio Ted Elliott |
| Starring | |
| Music by |
David Newman Mike Piccirillo Roxanne Seeman |
| Cinematography | Dick Bush |
| Edited by | Patrick McMahon |
|
Production
company |
Vestron Pictures (financing only)
|
| Distributed by | United Artists |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
103 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $7 million |
| Box office | $793,775 |
Little Monsters is a 1989 American fantasy black comedy film starring Fred Savage as Brian Stevenson, a sixth-grader who has recently moved to a new town, and Howie Mandel as Maurice, the monster under the bed.
The story purports to explain "what really goes on under the bed" and why children are always getting blamed for things they did not do. Beginning as a flashback, it tells of how Maurice befriends Brian and shows him a world where there are no rules and no parents to tell them what to do. However, there is more to this fantasy world than meets the eye, and when Brian's brother Eric (Fred Savage's real life brother Ben Savage) is kidnapped, the fun and games turn deadly serious.
Lonely after moving away from friends, Brian finds himself blamed for several things he apparently has not done. A quart of ice cream is left in the cupboard, Brian's bike is left on the driveway (causing his father to crash into it on his way to work). Brian insists he is innocent and blames his brother, Eric, who claims to have seen a monster the night before. As revenge, Brian snatches Eric's lunch and tosses it out the window, hitting Ronnie Coleman, the school bully who boards the bus and antagonizes Brian.
That night, while sleeping in Eric's room for a bet, Brian hears a loud noise, the source of which quickly disappears under Eric's bed. Brian subsequently is unable to make it through the night in Eric's room, making his way to the downstairs couch for the remainder of the night. The next morning, Eric and his friend Todd find Brian on the couch and joke about Brian being unable to sleep the entire night in Eric's room. Brian bets Eric "double or nothing" to sleep in Eric's room another night. The next night, a determined Brian sets booby traps, leaving bait in the form of cheese Doritos to attract the alleged "monster" and alters the legs on the bed to collapse once he determines the monster has come out from under the bed. He succeeds with this method, trapping the monster intruder: a blue-skinned monster named Maurice. Though scared and startled at first, Brian soon discovers that he and Maurice share the same interests and befriends him. Over the course of several nights, Maurice shows him a fun time in the monster world beneath Eric's bed. It consists of every child's dream: all the junk food and video games they want, and no adults to tell them what to do. It also has innumerable staircases leading to the spaces beneath children's beds, from which the monsters cause trouble. Maurice and Brian have fun making mischief in other people's homes, and Brian feels he has found a true friend at last; although Brian seems to be changing.
...
Wikipedia