Little Monsters

Little Monsters is a 1989 American fantasy comedy-drama film starring Fred Savage and Howie Mandel and directed by Richard Alan Greenberg. It tells the story of a boy who befriends a real-life "monster under the bed" and discovers a secret world of monsters who sneak into children's bedrooms at night to pull pranks on them. Although the film failed financially, receiving a limited theatrical release due to Vestron’s bankruptcy, it obtained a cult following on home video and is considered a requisite title in the gateway horror genre. Plot Brian Stevenson, an 11-year-old boy, and his family has just moved to suburban Boston, and he feels isolated in his new neighborhood. One morning, Brian finds himself blamed and wrongfully punished for several things he did not do. Insisting on his innocence, he blames his 6-year-old younger brother, Eric, who claims to have seen a monster the night before. At school, Brian gets into a fight with bully Ronnie Coleman. That night, upon returning to Eric's room to sleep for a bet, Brian finds the room in shambles, and sees the TV remote supernaturally slide and disappear under the bed. The next morning, Eric and his friend Todd find Brian on the living room 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, and leaves cheese Doritos as bait to attract the alleged "monster." Brian succeeds in trapping the monster intruder: a blue-skinned humanoid named Maurice. Though initially scared, Brian soon discovers that he and Maurice share the same interests and befriends him. Brian also learns that sunlight causes the monsters to collapse into piles of clothes. Over 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 available, with no adults to supervise. 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 also befriends a girl named Kiersten at his school. However, at the same time, Brian also begins to notice Maurice's ways of causing mischief can go too far sometimes, as evidenced when Maurice eats Kiersten's papers for an important science project she was working on, causing her to get a grade of zero.