screenshots / The Indian in the Cupboard / 1995 Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures

On his birthday, a boy receives an old cupboard with a key from his brother which has the power to give life to plastic toy figures placed and locked within it.

Directed by Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors, In & Out), the film is based on the 1980 children's book by British author Lynne Reid Banks.

Film debut of Native American actor Litefoot (as Little Bear), who in 1997 appeared in Kull: The Conqueror, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and Song of Hiawatha.

Said Litefoot in an interview: "From the bottom of my feet to the top of my bald head, all the tattooing, the dropped earlobes, the leggings, the moccasins, were all Onondaga in 1761." (Life Lessons, via Indians, The Los Angeles Times, 7/2/95)

Filming was marred when a technician was killed after falling from a motorized hoist that was being used to lift scenery on a sound stage, later resulting in a change to motion picture safety rules.)

The film was released to theaters in the United States and Canada on July 14, 1995.

The production filmed in New York and at the Sony Pictures Studios, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California.