Little Monsters

Little Monsters

1989

Dir; Richard Greenberg

"They cause all the trouble but you'll have all the fun"

The Savage family exploit all of their offspring to maximum effect in this enjoyable fun house of a movie.

This underrated little gem suffered from a limited cinema release when production company, Vestron Pictures went bankrupt shortly after its completion. The film was quickly forgotten about, not even gaining much of an audience through the home video market. That's a real shame because it's a genuinely enjoyable ride and a great deal of fun. Its a film that is so full of Savages you could be let off for thinking you had stumbled across a light hearted sequel to Cannibal Holocaust. Of course I'm talking about the savage family, not those dastardly jungle dwelling bastards. Here Fred takes the lead, whilst little brother Ben plays his, erm, little brother and big sister Kala pops up as one of the monsters. Mr and Mrs Savage must have been rubbing their hands together.

Fred Savage plays Brian, a miserable little fellow who hates living in his new town. He has no friends, his parents bicker incessantly, his Dad runs over his bike and he has a pushing fight with a fat child at school . He sits up at night eating peanut butter and onion sandwiches whilst watching a TV show called "All about chicks" in which a biker interviews a blonde bombshell in a bikini. Brian's little brother Eric, thinks that he has a monster under his bed and challenges Brian to swap rooms with him for one night. Despite not believing Eric's tall tale, Brian prepares for the challenge admirably. He turns his broken bike into a booby trap in a rather random slow motion montage and leaves a trail of crisps out to lead the monster to be snared.

Midway through the night Brian's booby trap, (which effectively turns the lights on if anyone eats his crisps), is set off and, low and behold the monster is real. His name is Maurice. He appears to be going through a manic phase of his bi-polar affective disorder, either that or he is performing an effective impersonation of Beetlejuice on crack. Maurice mixes a Marky Mark outfit with a mild punk aesthetic. He doesn't stop moving, talking, laughing or farting for a second whenever he is on screen. Maurice is portrayed by Howie Mandell who would later go on to gain much greater notoriety by growing a soul patch and prostituting his dignity as the presenter of the American version of Deal Or No Deal. He is clearly having infinitely more fun pulling boogers out of Fred Savages nose than he could possibly have opening boxes full of money. Every time he steps into shot Maurice is like a ticking time bomb of fun. He eats a battery and then worries that its going to give him constipation. He laughs after every sentence he or anyone else says. He paints a sleeping child's face and pulls a wad of gook out of his own ear with a cotton bud.

Maurice introduces Brian to an underworld which lays under all children's beds. He describes it as a place with no rules and no parents, where you can watch anything you like on TV and never get grounded. Sounds pretty awesome. Weirdly when they get down there it looks more like a crack house having an indoor fireworks display. It is full of a multitude of other monsters of all different shapes and sizes who, like Maurice, all seem to have a complete disregard for calm. Maurice takes Brian around the underworld, he shows him the local arcade, the password to open the door to the arcade is a fart. Maurice also shows Brian how to climb out from underneath other children's beds. Maurice likes to get these children in trouble with their parents and comes up with all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to do so. In the first bedroom they go to Maurice straddles a sleeping ginger child before putting muddy footprints all over his floor. They write "ca ca" on a girls bedroom wall and go to a school bully's house where they put cat food in his sandwich and piss in his apple juice.

The next night, Brian returns to the underworld for more fun. Maurice gives him a zit as a present and they play a weird game of baseball which involves "smashing shit". The ball gets hit into Snik's lair. Snik is the bully of the underworld, he looks like a really angry version of Meatloaf. Snik isn't happy that Brian has encroached on his personal space and appears to get even angrier when Brain turns down the fly he offers him as a snack. Luckily Maurice comes to the rescue and the pair go for another night out on the town. Brian likes Kiersten (Amber Baretto) a girl from school who always does her homework on time. Maurice takes him to her bedroom, turns his hand into a dog and eats her science project.

The next day Brian and Eric's parents sit them down and tell them that they are getting a divorce. Maurice tries to console him in as calm a manner as he can but his limbs still don't stop moving even during this touching scene. When nothing else works he invites Brian back down into the underworld. He tells him "pranks, snacks and games will take away the pain" which I think could be the entire basis for a new religion. Brian finds that he is starting to turn into one of the monsters and it is becoming difficult for him to get back to the real world. He panics and starts to saw the legs off of all the beds so that nothing can come or go through the portal to the underworld. His mother figures its just his way of dealing with the divorce.

When Snik finds out that Brian is not coming back to the underworld he gets angry with Maurice for telling him all of their secrets. Snik reports this to Boy (a pre-Pulp Fiction, Frank Whaley) who is the ruler of the underworld. Boy's head looks like a turd so he chooses to wear a mask made out of a human face. Strangely he also dons a public school boy suit jacket and shorts combination. Boy instructs Snik to bring Brian back so that he can never tell anyone about the underworld. To do this they kidnap both Maurice and little brother Eric. Brian puts together a small crack team of children to head down under the bed and save the day. Their only weapon against the monsters is bright light which makes them disappear into their clothes. The kids create some light bulb covered trouser suits and a super powered flash light to assist them in their mission.

The Kids hook back up with Maurice and make some pencils light up using some ridiculous pseudo science. They use their pencils and light bulb suits to blow up both Snik and Boy and save Eric who has been tied up to a huge dart board. The gang have to get out of the underworld before the sun comes up and Brian's calculator watch tells them that they don't have time to get back out under the bed in time. In a decision that laughs in the face of sensible narrative the kids decide to try to outrun time by heading from the east coast of America to the west coast of America so that they can make the most of the time difference. They run through the underworld, passing signs for all the major American cities as they go. Eventually they reach California with a few minutes to spare. They all climb out from underneath a tramps ramshackle bench bed but not before Brian and Maurice exchange an emotional farewell. Brian tells Maurice that he is his best and only friend, in return Maurice gives Brian his Marky Mark jacket. Brian wears it proudly. Now he's never going to make anymore friends.

As you may have picked up from the plot description this film is absolutely choc a block with nonsense. However, for the most part, it is glorious nonsense. The idea of a netherworld under every child's bed filled with brightly coloured monsters, no rules and every variation of fun imaginable should have caught every child's imagination in the same way that the Goonies or Back To The Future did in years just before this movie was made. Sadly it never became anywhere near as iconic as those pictures. Partly because it wasn't quite as slick and partly because of the distribution problems it suffered. Its a true shame. This would go on to be director Greenburg's only fiction film directing credit and was Fred Savages last big starring role (although, obviously he continued working in TV). I think if you haven't seen it you could do a lot worse than to check it out.

The cast is solid with decent performances from most of the adult actors (and an acceptable one from the middle Savage child). Future Home Alone evil doer, Daniel Stern, is solid as Brian and Eric's douche bag of a father and many of the monster performers ham it up to nice effect. But, without a doubt, Howie Mandell's performance as Maurice is the highlight of this movie. If there was a god (and this pretty much proves that there isn't) then Mandell would have been showered in awards for this performance. He is like a shot of heroin every time he appears on screen, chewing up and spitting out every other actor in his path and then taking a piss in their apple juice for good measure. You just wouldn't get away with a performance this outrageous and unhinged in a film today and that's a damn shame. This guy should fill his Deal Or No Deal money boxes with boogers, fart at his retarded audience and get back into movies immediately.

As I said, there are flaws, the most startling of which is, without doubt, the misjudged score. Insufferably emotive, pan pipe led orchestration saturates almost every scene. This could have been appropriate for a couple of the more emotional scenes but when a movie is specifically about a kid discovering a world of fun you surely want something a little bit more Huey Lewis and a whole lot less shit. On the few occasions that this drivel lets up we're treated to a little mid paced synth rock (courtesy of Nick Lowe and some unknowns) which is far more effective. There's also nice use of the Talking Heads, Road To Nowhere, at the climax of the movie. The only other flaws are moot points if you like trash cinema because they invariably riff on poorly explained plot developments. But do you really watch films like this and expect everything to make sense? No, and why? Because, as I'm sure Maurice would agree; there's no fun in sense is there.