Little Monsters

Brian Stevenson feels like the family scapegoat, blamed whenever anything goes wrong at home. After his younger brother insists there is a monster under the bed, Brian agrees to trade rooms for a night to prove him wrong. What he finds instead is Maurice, a loud, mischievous creature who lives beneath the bed and introduces Brian to a hidden world where monsters pull pranks on sleeping children. Brian befriends Maurice, though his bond with the monster causes trouble in his ordinary life above.

Richard Greenberg directed Little Monsters from a screenplay by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. It was Greenberg's second feature as director, following 1988's Remote Control. Fred Savage, then known for playing Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years, stars as Brian, with Howie Mandel as the voice and body of Maurice. Daniel Stern, Margaret Whitton, Rick Ducommun and Frank Whaley round out the cast. The picture was released on August 25, 1989, with a budget of about 7 million dollars.

On IMDb the film holds a 6.1 rating from roughly 15,000 votes, while TMDB users give it 5.8 from a much smaller pool of 223 ratings. A critics' score of 4.5 out of 10 from nine reviews puts it below the audience figure on IMDb. The gap suggests audiences have stayed more attached to it than reviewers were at the time.