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To make it look like a genuine gangster movie from the 1930s or 1940s, Home Alone director of photography Julio Macat used black-and-white negative film. The props that feature are also period pieces, which lend the fake movie an air of authenticity. That's right — Angels With Filthy Souls was a set of footage filmed solely for Chris Columbus' Home Alone. Thought to be a parody of the James Cagney-starring Angels With Dirty Faces , Columbus shot the black and white gangster footage for both Home Alone and it's follow-up Home Alone 2.
Additionally, the fictional movie had to be something that could possibly frighten a nine-year old. Angels with Filthy Souls is the fictitious gangster movie tucked into the beloved John Hughes and Chris Columbus family comedy Home Alone, which turns 25 this year. It’s the forbidden flick nine-year-old Kevin McCallister at last indulges in while enjoying a tremendous helping of ice cream—“Guys, I’m eating junk and watching rubbish!
Ralph Foody: Gangster #1 (Johnny)
According to Vanity Fair, the roles were originally reversed, but Foody had recently had knee replacement surgery and couldn’t physically perform Snakes' dramatic death. The one-minute-and-20-second clip was written and filmed exclusively for Home Alone, and, according to Vanity Fair, it was shot in just one day on a soundstage inside an abandoned high school gymnasium. Macat said the film is based off the Warner Bros. classic “Angeles with Dirty Faces,” which stared James Cagney and was directed by “Casablanca” auteur Michael Curtiz. In 2017, about four million people (11.6% of Poland's population) were watching it on Christmas Eve and in 2018 again in Christmas Eve the film recorded the highest viewership with 4.51 million viewers. Julio Macat, the films cinematographer, considers Home Alone his favorite film out of all the projects he has shot.
“My entire childhood, I thought the old-timey movie that Kevin watches in 'Home Alone' … was actually an old movie," Rogen tweeted. Macat spoke to The Hollywood Reporter to give some secrets about the phony film that Kevin watches when his parents left him home alone. Many viewers of “Home Alone” believed “Angels with Filthy Souls” was a real film from the 1930s, including funny man Seth Rogen. The fictitious gangster drama which gave Kevin McCallister and the world the line, “keep the change, ya filthy animal,” would be 82 this year, according to Home Alone' cinematographer Julio Macat. The 2016 Christmas-set horror film Better Watch Out includes a scene where a character who is obsessed with the Home Alone films demonstrates how, in real life, it would be deadly for someone to be hit in the face with a paint can swung from a distance.
Chris Evans (& More) Shocked To Learn Home Alone's Gangster Movie Isn't Real
The original title of Angels with Filthy Souls was "Gangster Movie." An official title wasn't decided until the crew figured out that they had a scene where Kevin McCallister has to put the VHS tape into the VCR. When it came time for a name, art director Dan Webster states that they used James Cagney's Angels with Dirty Faces to play with, which was also an influence on the noir short film that they created for Home Alone. Angels with Filthy Souls is one of the most iconic old school gangster movies in history, and it's only 1-minute and 20 seconds long. Angels With Filthy Souls is not a real movie – as in, the scenes Kevin plays during Home Alone are not from an original movie. By now, the classic status of Home Alone has allowed the saying to be etched into pop culture history forever.
Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister is accidentally left behind when his family takes off for a vacation in Paris, France over the holiday season. Once he realizes they've left him home by himself, Kevin learns to fend for himself. He eventually has to protect his house against bumbling burglars Harry and Marv , who are planning to rob every house in Kevin's suburban Chicago neighborhood.
More: Home Alone Recut As A Horror Movie
Later, he uses it as a weapon in his arsenal against the Wet Bandits (and a hapless Little Nero’s Pizza delivery boy). In Chris Columbus’s Christmas classic Home Alone , Macaulay Culkin’s character, Kevin, uses an old gangster movie to scare off the burglars’ first advances on the McCallister home. In the beginning of the novelization, a prologue, which ends up being Marv's nightmare in prison, he and Harry sneak away from the cops and return to Kevin's house to seek revenge on Kevin. Harry and Marv end up triggering extra traps that Kevin had set up in the garage. Kevin watches as Marv ends up triggering a trap where a running lawnmower falls on his head .
Macat, who has filmed over 40 movies including “The Nutty Professor,” “Tango and Cash" and “So I Married an Axe Murderer,” said that making “Home Alone” and the fake gangster flick remains his favorite project. Creating the fake film, which was supposed to be set in the 1930s, was made easier by the backdrop of "Home Alone" itself. Since “Home Alone” is set in Chicago, there were many places to find inspiration and sets, Macat said. He used 35mm film and special lighting techniques to give it the classic Hollywood black-and-white look.
Box office
It was also the highest-grossing Christmas film until it was surpassed by Dr. Seuss' The Grinch in 2018. Home Alone was first released by Fox Video on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States on August 22, 1991, their first video to go direct to sell-through rather than to the video rental market first. It sold 11 million copies, generating Fox revenue of $150 million making it, along with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the highest-selling video of all time at that point. Due to the sales, the film did not perform as well in the rental market. Columbus initially hoped to have Bruce Broughton score the film, and early posters listed him as the composer.
The police arrive and arrest Harry and Marv, having identified all the houses that they broke into due to Marv's destructive habit of flooding them. Hughes conceived Home Alone while on vacation, with Warner Bros. being originally intended to finance and distribute the film. However, Warner Bros. shut down production after it exceeded its assigned budget. 20th Century Fox assumed responsibilities following secret meetings with Hughes.
Most memorably, Kevin plays it in the background to scare a pizza delivery boy in the film, and finds that he has ‘an entire cheese pizza’ to himself after the delivery guy runs away, thinking there’s a gunfight happening in the McCallister home. "We really wanted to do an homage to the movie , but we really didn't watch it a lot," Macat said. I likely thought that the movie wasn’t real, but I could just have easily thought it was real ’40s film noir. Senta Moses, who played Tracy, recalled in 2020 that one of the most difficult scenes to shoot was the family's run through O'Hare International Airport to catch their flight.
Troy Brown and Leon Delaney were stuntmen for Pesci and Stern, respectively. An injury had occurred between Pesci and Culkin during one of the rehearsals for the scene in which Harry tries to bite off Kevin's finger. Pesci said in the People interview, "I did sustain serious burns to the top of my head during the scene where Harry's hat is set on fire." Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve, Harry and Marv finally realize that only Kevin is in the McCallister home, and Kevin overhears them discussing plans to break into the house that night. Kevin starts to miss his family and asks the local Santa Claus impersonator if he could bring his family back for Christmas. He goes to church and watches a choir perform, and encounters Marley, who proves the rumors about him are false.
Naomi Barnwell of Roobla said that "Home Alone has all the ingredients that make for a great kids’ film". Home Alone grossed $285.8 million in the United States and Canada and $190.9 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $476.7 million, against a production budget of $18 million. Harry and Marv break in, spring the traps, and suffer various injuries. While Harry and Marv pursue Kevin around the house, he calls the police and lures the duo into a vacant neighboring house which they had previously broken into. Harry and Marv ambush Kevin and prepare to get their revenge, but Marley intervenes and knocks them out with his snow shovel.
Once in Paris, his mother and father desperately try to book a flight home. It's Christmas time and the McCallister family is preparing to head to Paris for vacation. Eight-year-old Kevin is the black sheep of the house, who is regularly picked on by his siblings and cousins, and his parents are annoyed by his antics. The next day, the McCallisters accidentally sleep in and barely make it to their flight, but when airborne they realize they forgot Kevin.
Home Alone fans are shocked to find the gangster movie Kevin watches is FAKE
In December 2015, Culkin reprised his role as an adult Kevin McCallister in the inaugural episode of the Jack Dishel web series, "DRYVRS", where a visibly disturbed Kevin recounts his experience of being left home alone by his family. In response to Culkin's video, Daniel Stern appeared in a short video reprising his role as Marv, released in conjunction with Stern's Reddit AMA, where he pleads for Harry to return to help protect him against Kevin's traps. It was praised for its quotable phrases, morals, traps, and main character. Hannah-Rose Yee of Stylist called the ending "very sweet" and praised the score from John Williams, calling it "fantastic".
He also resented the early unit calls, since they prevented him from starting his day with nine holes of golf as he preferred to do. After he took the assistant director by the collar one day to complain about this, daily call times were moved back from 7 to 9 a.m. On the other end of the schedule, the crew had limited time to film the many nighttime scenes, since Culkin could not work any later than 10 p.m. Home Alone 2 opened with $31.1 million from 2,222 theaters, averaging $14,008 per site. It broke the short-lived record set one week earlier by Bram Stoker's Dracula for having the largest November opening weekend. The film went on to hold this record until 1994 when it was taken by Interview with the Vampire.
