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I remember watching this movie with my dad when I was 9 and it was easily one of the funniest movie I had ever feasted my eyes upon. Howie Mandel's one liners were wildly inappropriate for children. Not too mention Fred Savage who was playing an eleven year old boy was almost just as cheeky which made the hilarity of the characters even more difficult not to laugh at. While it definitely doesn't even come close to being as hilarious as The Goonies it certainly is one of the funniest children's films to come out of the 1980s.

Little Monsters (1989) is a movie I loved as a kid and recently watched again on Netflix with my daughter. The storyline follows a young man whose little brother is plagued by a monster under his bed. When he decides to help his brother get over the problem he offers to switch rooms for a night and discovers the monster is real. The young man becomes best friends with the monster but discovers there may be side effects to being friends with a monster. This movie is directed by Richard Greenberg (Tales from the Crypt episodes) in his directorial debut and stars Fred Savage (Wonder Years), Howie Mandel (Gremlins), Daniel Stern (Home Alone), Margaret Whitton (Major League), Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction) and Ben Savage (Boy Meets World). The storyline and settings in this are absolutely awesome. They did a great job of establishing relationships between characters and the settings both within the house, school and under the bed were awesome, really captures the imagination. The dialogue in this was very good and creative. Savage and Mandel played off each other to perfection. The makeup and special effects were very good and the conclusion was surprisingly well developed, thought out and intense. There's a lot to like about this film and I would recommend seeing it at least once. I'd score this a 7.5/10.

Little Monsters is a fun film for kids. Brian Stevenson (Fred Savage) seems to be getting blamed for everything these days. Leaving his bike out behind his dad's car. Making a mess out of the ice cream. But Brian insists that it isn't his fault.

One night, Brian discovers the cause to all his problems is a monster named Maurice (Howie Mandell), and shows Brian that under every kids bed, is the entrance to the underworld of childish monsters. And for Brian, it's the coolest thing and an excellent escape from his problems in the real world. It's great. There's no adult supervision. They can do whatever they want, whenever. And, the funniest part, is that Brian gets to join Maurice creating monster mischief to get little kids in trouble (peanut butter on the phone, seran wrap on the toilet seat, etc). It's a whole lot of fun for kids tired of rules.

But the monster life isn't all the treat it's cracked up to be. In the first place, there's an ugly looking fat monster who torments the monster kids that don't obey him. Maurice and his new friends have to destroy the evil monsters who have kidnapped Brian's little brother, Eric (played by Fred Savage's brother, Ben). And, Brian, Maurice, and some of their friends, have to get Eric back before they get stuck in the monster world forever. If they do, they'll turn into monsters too.

This is a great, creative kids movie, exploring the idea of monster life under the bed long before Monster's Inc. I still enjoy the sequence of Brian setting up his room to trap the monster and also the sequence where Brian and Maurice go around the neighboorhood to cause mischief and get the kids in trouble. And, despite it's age, I don't even think it's a dated adventure movie. Unfortuantely, it was also one of those movies where young Ben Savage was still the cute little kid that made you ignore the fact that he couldn't act.

Howie mandell plays a great job as maurice, the boogyman that lives under brians bed. His wacky and fun and really shows off his acting talents here. His makeup along with the design of the rest of the monsters is fun also. We also have Danial stern as brians father, who was fun but wish we saw more of him. The rest of the cast were good and this movie is just a big thrill ride. That is untill brians fun becomes a nightmare but even that is entertaining but also scary at the same time. Overall a good movie but not intended as a family viewing experiance.

After moving house and witnessing his parents' marriage crumbling in front of him, Brian (Fred Savage) investigates his brothers claims that monsters keep coming from under his bed and scaring him at night. After swapping rooms, Brian is visited by a big blue monster, and the next night Brian manages to trap him in his room using his engineering skills. The monster turns out to be hyperactive troublemaker Maurice (Howie Mandel) who befriends Brian, and shows him the wonders of the monster world under his bed, where every night, the monsters reek havoc in the homes of young children. But the mysterious monster Boy (Frank Whaley) wants Brian for himself and keep him under the bed until the sun comes up, and thus turning him into a monster.

Apart from the first four Rocky films, Little Monsters was hands down the main film I watched religiously as a child, my face no further than two feet from the TV screen. I remember finding it strangely eerie amongst all the fun, and being genuinely disturbed by some scenes. Boy's henchman Snik, a giant, hunchbacked monster with large bottom teeth, really frightened me, and the scene where he breaks one of Maurice's horns always shocked me. Re-visiting the film, roughly around fifteen years later, I can see that I was right to feel unnerved.

Yes, the film is certainly childish and playful, but has a surprising line of darkness flowing through it from beginning to end. From early on, where Brian finds an overturned TV in the darkness of his closet that is showing the climax of The Fly, to the finale that sees Boy's face burned off to reveal a hideous face underneath, the film often steps out of the childhood safety area. It's certainly refreshing to see, and this sort of atmosphere can only be found in the Golden Age of kiddie flicks, the 80's, where films like The Dark Crystal and The Goonies showed creepy creatures and foul-mouthed kids that the target audience could really enjoy and relate to.

Not to say that Little Monsters quite matches up to the two films just mentioned - it has some annoying child characters and Maurice does become slightly tiresome - but it is certainly an imaginative, funny and exciting little film. It's sad to see another of the key child stars of the era, Fred Savage, come out of the decade and dissolve into the woodwork, similar to the likes of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. Although his maniacal behaviour does occasionally become exhausting, Howie Mandel's performance is certainly energetic, and you can't help but love him when he drinks a bully's apple juice, only to refill it with p**s. Hardly a classic, but certainly a film I will absolutely cherish from my youth, and will enjoy revisiting once every decade or so.

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