Images via Netflix

I remember as a kid during the ’90s there was a time where TV channels showed all kinds of movies, not just cable channels but network channels too. Channels would have their night at the movies, and some channels would just spam the hell out of them for days at a time. If you missed seeing one movie or didn’t catch the whole thing it was no biggie since most channels would just replay that movie the next day or the next week as a lead in to that week’s movie. If you were especially lucky you only had to wait about 6-8 hours or so because they’d show it again later that day or you could just see a different time on one of those channels sister channels or affiliates.

I saw a lot of movies this way and most of the time they weren’t some bad straight to VHS movies starring some easily forgotten nobody or somebody at the dawn of their career, a lot of times they were good movies that got theatrical releases and starred well-known actors.

Today, while I know a few channels will still show movies here and there, I know a lot of channels have moved away from this, instead choosing to invest in themselves and focusing on original content rather than spending their money on broadcast rights for somebody else’s movies—in fact I’ve heard the reason why SyFy channels keeps cranking out so many bad movies is because it’s cheaper (and more profitable since now they have a movie which they can sell to others) to make their own bad movies than it is to buy broadcast rights for somebody else’s movies. One movie I remember watching a lot this way when I was a kid is a little gem from 1989 called Little Monsters.

Little Monsters begins with the Stevenson family having just moved to their new home in the Boston suburbs and things are not going well for them. Elder son, Brian is sad and upset that he was forced to move away from all of his old friends, younger son, Eric is claiming a monster is coming out from under his bed to scare him and their parents’ marriage is going through some difficulties.

After a series of mysterious pranks gets Brian in trouble, Eric makes a bet with Brian that he can’t spend one night in Eric’s room. While trying to sleep in Eric’s room, Brian learns that Eric’s monsters is real and is unable to finish the bet and spends the rest of the night on the living room couch. The next night Brian tries sleeping in Eric’s room again, this time with an elaborate booby trap set up to capture Eric’s monster and prove his existence. Brian succeeds in capturing the monster, revealing that it is a blue-skinned creature named Maurice who is responsible for all the mysterious pranks and also shrivels up into his clothes when exposed to light before letting him go back under the bed.

The next night Maurice returns and invites Brian to go under the bed, revealing that under the bed is a portal to the Monster World where monsters are free to play and do whatever they want. Over the next several nights Brian and Maurice bond as they games and have fun in the Monster World as well as use the monsters’ portals to other people’s beds to play pranks on them

.

In the real world, Brian’s parents’ marriage continues to fall apart leading to his father moving out of the family house as the two attempt a trial separation. Upset, Brian goes back to the monsters’ world to have fun but becomes disgusted with the monsters when Maurice invites him to sneak into a house with them and participate in one of their favorite activities, scaring young infants. Brian decides to leave the monsters through the front door and is horrified to learn that he slowly transforming into a monster when light hits his hand causing it to shrivel up into his sleeve.

Disillusioned with Maurice and the Monster World, Brian decides to saw the legs off of all the beds in his house in an attempt to cut them off from Maurice. Meanwhile in the Monster World, Maurice gets reprimanded by Snik, the right-hand monster and enforcer for the Monster World’s ruler, Boy for failing to get Brian to fully transform into a monster and serve as a playmate for Boy.

Snik, using the Stevenson family’s sofa bed in the living room as an entrance comes to the human world and kidnaps Brian’s brother Eric to serve as Brian’s replacement.

Brian enlists the help of his love interest Kiersten and Eric’s best friend, Todd and armed with several flashlights and a high intensity lamp that Brian built using batteries and lighting supplies that Kiersten had access to, enter the Monster World and confront Boy and Snik in an attempt to rescue Eric.

Boy, using an arsenal of deadly toys destroys Brian’s improvised lamp and throws him, Todd, and Kiersten into his dungeon with Maurice.

Using an improvised light made out of pencils and an old telephone the group is able to escape by shrinking Maurice into his clothes and sliding him under the door and outside where he can free them.

With little time before sunrise (the group needed to be out before sunrise or else the portals would close and they would be turned into monsters) they return to the human world where they gather more lights and batteries and with the help of Ronnie, their school-bully and Brian’s nemesis use the lights to shrivel up boy and explode Snik (it is implied that Boy is killed due to Snik’s explosion causing his clothes to catch fire). They then save Eric while Maurice finishes off Snik with a flamethrower.

Unfortunately for the group, they sun has risen and their portal home has closed. Lucky for them they remember how time zone’s work and they travel across the Monster World to portals that lead westward and use a portal that opens underneath a homeless man sleeping on a Malibu beach to return to human world.

Before leaving Brian and Maurice have a heartfelt goodbye with Brian stating that he cannot return to the Monster World due to him transforming into a monster and that the two will never see each other again. Maurice gives Brian his leather jacket to remember him by and implies to Brian that there is a possibility that the two will see each other gain in the future.

Brian then calls home to tell his parents that he and Eric are safe and the movie ends with him and the others playing on the beach.

Fred Savage played the Brian Stevenson, the movie’s protagonist. Savage is best known for playing Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years. The success of Wonder Years pretty much made Savage a household name and one of the most successful and popular child actors of his time, receiving numerous awards including Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.

By today’s standards Brian’s may seem like a little asshole. His behavior, his relationship with his brother and parents and the pranks he pulls with Maurice, if any kid today got caught acting that way he’d have his ass beat quick and nobody would feel sorry for him because they would all think he deserved it. While Brian’s behavior won’t be tolerated today, back then it would have been more accepted. I like to call this the Bart Simpson or Dennis the Menace affect because with Bart Simpson and Dennis the Menace you have these young kids acting like little shits but it’s supposed to be done out of humor, and because they’re kids it’s supposed to be viewed as innocent mischief, and while the mischief may be toned down a little today this is still an underlying theme with children’s characters today. Look at shows, sitcoms, and movies that have children if you break them down to their basic elements the base humor comes from the fact that these kids are misbehaving or doing something they shouldn’t but we’re led to believe it’s okay because they’re supposed to be viewed as these sweet innocent children and they’re just doing it for the comedy.

While Brian does act like an asshole, if you take a look at his situation it’s a bit justified. In the first 30 seconds it’s established that Brian is miserable because he had to move away from all of his old friends and he’s having trouble adapting and fitting in at his new school. Add that to the fact that his relationship with is parents and brother is antagonistic, and there’s some implication that he knows his parents’ marriage is in trouble. All of that has just taken its toll on Brian. He’s a kid and he’s frustrated and he’s just looking for something to cheer him up and he found that in Maurice, who gave him the friendship that he so desperately missed. As for the pranks, they were just an added bonus, they were something fun that Brian and Maurice could do together, as well an outlet for Brian to let out his frustrations as shown when he and Maurice get revenge on Ronnie, the school bully.

Despite Brian’s dickish attitude he does have some sense of compassion and right and wrong. This is shown when they sneak into Kiersten’s house and Maurice wants to ruin her homework which Brian objects to. While some may see Brian’s objection be due to Kiersten being his love interest, there is some evidence that he does have a limit to what kind of pranks he’s willing to pull with and that limit is school. I would say that this would be a good foreshadowing of Brian being against the monsters having that scaring party with the baby but it doesn’t since during the pranking montage you see Brian and Maurice’s victims are other kids who are clearly way younger and smaller than him. I also find it odd that Brian’s limit is homework since during the prank montage you see him and Maurice hiding a roller skate near a staircase, creating a situation where they could potentially kill or cripple somebody.

Howie Mandel played Maurice. Mandel has done a lot of things in his career although I think he’s probably best known for creating and starring in the old Fox Kids cartoon Bobby’s World as well as his time as the host of Deal or No Deal and as a judge on America’s Got Talent. I remember the very first comic book convention I went to was Stan Lee’s Comikaze (LA Comic Con today) back in 2013 and we walked passed his booth where he was signing autographs and was taking pictures and he was between people coming up to him and he made eye-contact with my mom, and she waved at him and he waved back.

Looking at Maurice and the monsters it’s a bit questionable why he and the others do the things they do. Are they just naturally mischievous? Like do they just have an urge to be assholes? Or is it due to the fact that monsters were originally children and that by becoming monsters they pretty much start living the kid version of the Purge and they can do whatever they want and because of that they never develop a proper sense of right and wrong? Considering that’s the nature of the monsters I do find it a bit odd how Maurice became willing to help Brian and his friends save Eric, or help overthrow Boy’s regime by killing Snik or even helping Brian and his friend’s return home. At the end when the other monsters are celebrating Snik and Boy’s demise it suggests that the other monsters were unhappy with Boy’s rule and wanted him gone. The most obvious answer would be that the power of the friendship montage with Brian and Maurice created a true bond between the two and that is what convinced Maurice to help Brian. Although I would have been quite interested if instead Maurice sided with Boy or was revealed to be working for him the entire time and Brian would have been forced to dispatch Maurice alongside Boy and Snik.

Fred Savage’s real-life younger brother, Ben plays Brian’s younger brother, Eric. Ben is best known for playing Corey Matthews on Boy Meets World and its spinoff Girl Meets World. Other than those, Ben hasn’t really done that much except for guest starring roles here and there.

As for Eric, there’s really not that much to say about him, he’s your typical little kid living in the ’80s. His presence in the film sets the stage for how problematic things are in the Stevenson’s household because you see them from the perspective of an innocent child, but in my opinion Eric is pretty much just a walking MacGuffin.

Daniel Stern plays Glen Stevenson, the Stevenson family’s patriarch. Stern is best known for playing Marv, one half of the Sticky Bandits in Home Alone 1 and 2. He was also on the Wonder Years with Fred Savage, doing the future Kevin Arnold voiceovers. Stern also played Phil Brickman, the Cubs’ eccentric pitching coach in Rookie of the Year, a film he also directed. More recently Stern was also in the Netflix movie Game Over Man which starred the guys from Workaholics.

Glen seems to act like a good father towards his kids but when looking at his relationship with his wife he seems like a terrible husband. In one instance when Glen and his wife, Holly are arguing Glen accuses his wife of only being after his money despite her arguing there’s more to it. In another instance when Holly is attempting to do some renovations to the house Glen is too focused with watching sports on the television, his experienced ruined by the fact that Maurice has stolen his remote and that he must now sit right next to the TV so that he can change channels quickly, the entire time he is too focused on figuring out where the remote is and his sports, oblivious to his wife who needs help.

Margaret Whitton played Stevenson family matriarch, Holly. I’m not really all that familiar with Whitton, looking at her filmography the only other movies she’s been in that I recognize are 9½ weeks, Major League 1 and 2, Big Girls Don’t Cry… They Get Even, none of which I’ve actually seen. She was also in Man Without A Face which I do remember seeing but I don’t remember that much about it. Whitton unfortunately passed away in 2016 at the age of 67 after a brief battle with cancer.

As Holly Stevenson there’s not that much to her. The Stevenson parents seem like any other stereotypical movie/TV parents. You have the father, a white-collared career minded worker while the mom is this stay at home figure who is preoccupied full time with taking care of the house. If there’s anything to say about Holly it is that she is supposed to be this foil for Glen. For example when looking at how the parents treat their kids Glen seems harsher and stricter when punishing Brian while Holly is more sympathetic towards him.

Amber Barretto played Kiersten, Brian’s love interest who helps him rescue Eric from the monsters. After Little Monsters biggest role would be Kirsty Ford on Hang Time, one of NBC’s teen sitcoms that they would air on Saturday mornings in the ’90s when the success of Saved by the Bell persuaded them to move away from cartoons and focus more on the teenage demographic.

Kiersten is your typical girl next door being cute and tomboyish rather than just strictly feminine. As a star student in science, Kiersten was entrusted with access to a teachers only supply closet filled with batteries and lights which comes in handy towards the end when Brian needs help rescuing Eric.

William Murray Weiss played Todd, Eric’s best friend who helps Ben rescue him. A quick look at Weiss’s IMDB reveals only 4 acting credits including Little Monsters so there’s not that much I can tell you about him.

Like Eric, Todd doesn’t really have that much of a role in the film other than being Eric’s friend and somebody to say additional dialogue. In fact, you could edit all of Todd’s scenes and any references to him out of the movie and you won’t notice any difference in the story.

Devin Ratray played Ronnie Coleman, the school bully who Brian enlists to help save Eric. Ratray is probably best known for playing douchebag older brother, Buzz in Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

Coleman is your standard bully, he;s bigger than the other kids (I feel that Coleman’s size implies that he’s older than the other kids which suggests that he was held back a few times which also makes him less intelligent), and he has an anger problem. Being the bully, Coleman is a character that you very little pity for when Brian and Maurice prank him during their pranking montage by replacing his apple juice with piss and tampering with his sandwich. His appearance at the end when Eric is rescued is a bit while being a subtle plot hole just really bugs me. Ronnie and Brian never did reconciled with one another, and even then out of all the people to get to help, why your archenemy?

Rick Ducommun played Snik, Boy’s right-hand man and enforcer in the Monster World. I’m not really that familiar with Ducommun, so there’s not that much I can tell you about him. A quick look at his filmography reveals a list of several small parts in a variety of movies so it’s pretty safe to say that Snik was Ducommun’s biggest role of his career. Ducommun died of complications from diabetes in 2015.

Snik is a walking representation of the evil of the Monster World. Until we meet Snik we’re to believe that the Monster World as this carefree child paradise where the inhabitants are free to do whatever they want, and while most of the stuff the monsters do is mischievous, we still get this sense of innocence from them because we’re supposed to accept the idea that they’re just children playing games. Then we see Snik whose behavior is completely different than what we’ve seen from the other monsters. He’s physically larger and more aggressive and more violent than the other monsters.

In fact, when we’re first introduced to Snik we see that inspires fear in the other monsters before he threatens and the rips the head off of another monster. Aside from his physical presence, what really makes Snik especially scary is that he has the ability to create his own portals into peoples’ houses by unfolding their sofa beds, an ability he demonstrates when he kidnaps Eric.

Frank Whaley played Boy, the ruler of the Monster World. Whaley is mostly known for doing small indie stuff but he has had parts in a few bigger, more mainstream movie such as Field of Dreams, Born on the Fourth of July, Pulp Fiction, Broken Arrow, Red Dragon, and Hustlers just to name a few. I best remember Whaley from an episode of the 2002 Twilight Zone revival narrated by Forrest Whitaker and the 2007 movie Vacancy starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale where he played the creepy motel proprietor who would film the murders of guests and sell the footage as snuff films.

When we first see Boy we are led to believe that he is the most normal and human looking of all the inhabitants of the Monster World, however it is quickly revealed that Boy is hiding some grotesque monster attributes and it isn’t until Brian tries to zap Boy with a flashlight that we we see Boy’s true form, as like an inhuman lizard creature thing hiding under fake skin.

I remember reading online as well as seeing an early draft of the Little Monsters script, the original vision of Boy depicted him as this Victorian-era child who in the Monster World had stopped growing but continued to age becoming this old and withered child, kind of like Benjamin Button.

Boy is a walking representation of the Monster World. As I said earlier, when we first see the Monster World we’re supposed to believe that it is the kid-friendly paradise where kids are free to misbehave and do whatever they want free of consequences or any adults to tell him what to do, but as the story progresses we learn that there is a malevolent side to the monster the world. The same can be said for Boy, when we first meet him, Boy is the most human-looking monster we’ve encountered up to this point and he’s surrounded by all these toys, and it seems like all he wanted was a playmate. However we quickly learn that Boy is not what he seems. As I said earlier, his human appearance is a disguise that hides something far from human, his toys are really dangerous weapons, and as you can see from the clip above he acts pretty evil.

Watching Little Monsters now it’s hard to believe that this was a kid’s movie by today’s standards. One of the big things that stick out are the pranks Brian and Maurice pull. During the prank montage you see them pull typical sleepover stuff: Saran wrap on the toilet, peanut butter on the phone, hands in a bowl of water. Then they escalate to straight up vandalism leaving dirty foot and hand prints, on walls and destroying golf clubs. I mean at that point they’re just being dicks. The most shocking prank they play though is something I mentioned earlier and it is when they leave a roller skate hidden under some newspaper at the top of some stairs.

One thing that really bugged me while watching Little Monsters is the time frame when Brian goes to rescue Eric.

• The family goes to bed.
• Snik comes and kidnaps Eric.
• Brian and his mom find out Eric is missing.
• Brian recruits Kiersten and Todd to help him.
• The three go to the school to gather more lights and build an improvised heavy duty flashlight using the stuff in Kiersten’s teachers only closet.
• The three of them enter the Monster World, fight their way to Boy’s staircase, and then get thrown into a dungeon.
• They escape and return to the real world.
• Recruit Ronnie as well as gather more lights and batteries from the teacher’s closet to build their light suits.
• Carry all their lights and batteries which include a pallet of car batteries back to Boy’s staircase in the Monster World.
• Final confrontation with Boy and Snik.

How the hell were they able to do everything they did in one night? Before going to the Monster World Brian looks up the time for sunrise the next day so they know when to get out and it’s like 6:15AM. Does Brian’s family go to bed at sunset? It’s established early in the film that the school isn’t exactly that close to the Stevenson household since Brian either needs his bicycle or needs to take the bus to get there.

Also what’s up with Ronnie? It’s clearly established that Ronnie and Brian are enemies. On top of that too it’s also established that as the school bully Ronnie is not just a dick to Brian but also to Eric and Todd as well so how were they able to convince him to help him? As a movie bully Ronnie pretty much completed his arc halfway through the film when Brian got his revenge on him during the prank montage when he and Maurice pissed in his apple juice and potentially poisoned his sandwich. Unless there was some sort of redemption/make up scene you don’t really expect to see him again—even by ’80s kids movie logic with all their plotholes. Considering his role as a big stupid bully it makes sense that they brought him along to carry most of their gear but looking at their setups they easily could have gotten away with just 1 or 2 of them wearing light suits and having the others stand back with the batteries.

Realistically if Brian could bring other people into the Monster World why not just show his mom the portal so so she could call the cops and have Brian go in with a SWAT Team.

As an ’80s kids movie Little Monsters is unfortunately one of the movies that doesn’t age well. Aside from all the obvious plotholes that so many people will notice and point out today, the whole tone of the movie is just way too dark. While its theme of an outcast kid looking for friendship and happiness is something that is still used today, Little Monsters just addresses it in a twisted way even by adult standards. Looking back at this now, I can’t believe I wasn’t that traumatized watching this as a kid.