It’s almost time for the holiday season, the time when family and friends gather to celebrate Christmas, which is one of the most anticipated holidays of the year. And every year during the entire month of December, We are offered many movie titles that take Christmas as the main theme, such as The Grinch, which tells about a grumpy creature called The Grinch who hates Christmas so much, he wanted to steal all the presents from the village with the intention of ruining the holiday spirit. Another Christmas-themed movie (or movie franchise) that I can remember is the Home Alone movie series. Based on the name itself, the movie depicts an 8 year-old kid (9 years old in the fourth movie and 10 years old in the fifth movie) who was accidentally left alone by his family, and later having to fend off burglars from invading the house and robbing them by setting up booby traps. The franchise itself released 5 movies in total, starting with the namesake first movie released in 1990, followed by Home Alone 2: Lost in New Yorkin 1992, Home Alone 3in 1997 (with new casts), Home Alone 4 in 2002 and Home Alone: The Holiday Heistin 2012. From those 5 movie series, the first two are regarded as the greatest holiday movies ever, while the latter three was deemed regular. In this article, I want to discuss the first two movies of the Home Alonefranchise, on why the traps could possibly kill you in real life and why it is considered as the best holiday movies ever made.
Directed by Chris Columbus, Home Alone follows the 8 year-old Kevin McCallister (played by Macaulay Culkin), who was a troublemaker in the McCallister family. Prior to be accidentally left alone by them on their way to Paris for spending the Christmas vacation, he accidentally ruined the Christmas dinner after being bullied by his older siblings. He initially relished the fact that he was left alone, but later as the movie progresses, he had to defend the house from “The Wet Bandits” (Their MO involves flooding the target house’s basement after they done robbing it) Harry Lyme (Joe Pesci) and Marv Merchants (Daniel Stern), who planned to rob the supposedly empty McCallister residence. He went on to rig the house with various traps designed to inflict pain (blow torches, single nail in the stairs covered with tar, ice on the outside patio) and humiliation (feathers and cling wraps with glue placed in the doorway). The bandits ended up arrested by the police. During the events of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Kevin accidentally boarded the wrong flight heading for New York City (The Family planned to spend Christmas in Miami, Florida). During his time at the city, Kevin met the ghost of his past, now called “The Sticky Bandits” (Marv wore a sticky glove that would make him steal things a lot easier), who previously escaped from prison in Chicago, Illinois (The city where the McCallister resided). He initially went to meet his uncle, who lived just outside NYC, but discovered that the townhouse was under renovation, with the occupants said to be in Paris, France. He later rigged the house with more traps with resulted in more pain (an improvised arc welder made out of metal sink, blow torches with kerosene dumped in the toilet and big hole inside the house) and even more humiliation (bird seeds, cements falling from 100 ft.). He planned to lure the bandits into those traps after caught them red-handed robbing a toy store. He might only wanted to teach these bad guys some holiday lessons, but some of the traps are considered so dangerous, it can trigger a deadly chain reaction on the poor bastards’ bodies.
If you analyze the traps really carefully, you can see that some of them placed by Kevin were not only designed to humiliate those bandits, but to inflict pain as well as incapacitate them almost to the point of dying. Some can even kill them on one go. In the first movie alone, there are several traps that can easily kill one of those bandits in real life. One of those traps is when Kevin used few paint cans (presumably with paints inside) as swinging pendulums at the stairs. In the movie, the bandits only suffered concussions, but in real life, the force of the can travelling at least 32 km/h (20 mph) could easily break the face of the recipient of the blow. Some YouTube videos depicting this trap with a ballistic dummy revealed that the force is so powerful; it can snap the neck bones effortlessly. Kevin amplified this trap’s deadliness by replacing the cans with a metal column during his defense plan in New York. This would result in broken ribs, and after cutting the column loose, it fell two stories to those poor burglars, possibly killing them due to the weight and the force generated by the metal bar. Another trap is when Harry triggered a mechanism on the back door, which in turn engaged a blowtorch searing his head. He stood for exactly seven seconds before burying his head on the snow. During that period, he would suffer at least third-degree burn injuries, with parts of his skull visible underneath the scalp. This trap is replicated in the second movie, this time with explosive proportions. Harry again triggered a blowtorch disguised as a lamp, and when he saw a puddle on the toilet, assuming it was water, he dipped his head, not knowing that it was actually kerosene laid by Kevin. In real life, the force of the blow would instantly kill him with multiple fractures and traumas on his internal organs. Marv would die several times during the course of the second movie. He had to endure four bricks being thrown at him from 5 stories above. In the movie, it would only left him concussed and some brick marks on his forehead, but if this happened in real life, one brick alone would spell the end of his criminal career (and probably his life). He managed to somehow survive those punishments, and after caught with staple gunshots to his backside, groin and nose, he entered the house, only to fell two stories below the ground due to a massive hole. He fell flat on his face and his front torso, shocking his internal organs and hemorrhaging his brain. After he slipped on a puddle of slime and crashed into a shelve full of paint cans (the impact was absorbed by his groin and his body, with possible broken ribs), he went for a sink (rigged by Kevin, turning it into an arc welder) for a wash, only to be electrocuted. To put it simple, he was fried inside out the moment he touched the metal sink, and would die as the result. Some even designed to either leave a lasting mark or killing them slowly with diseases and infections. When Harry attempted to enter the house from the front, he placed his hand on the doorknob, turned into a glowing red-hot metal by Kevin and burned his hand, leaving the “M” mark on his left palm. During this time, Harry would need a skin transplant by removing few skin tissues from his other body parts and graph it onto his damaged palm. Marv would contract tetanus as a result from stepping into a nail after being stripped of his footwear in the basement with stairs covered in tar, beside neural damaged caused by the trap itself. Some male audiences would cringe when Kevin shot Harry in the groin with a BB gun. It might not injure him fatally, but it affected his fertility and would require medical attention, as it might rupture his scrotum.
Despite the deadly nature of the traps, the effects that they might cause are intended for comedy. When Marv was hit with a brick for the first time, he fell on his back while felling dizzy. After his fourth time with those bricks, he was depicted as someone who lost few IQ points and was talking gibberish. Groin shots also depicted as the comedic element, with Harry when he was shot with a BB gun, and Marv when a staple gun nailed him in the unmentionables. Another hilarious moment slipped in the movie is when Marv was electrocuted for so long, he turned into a skeleton. While Harry would be killed after the kerosene explosion, in the movie, he was covered in coal from the explosive encounter. These traps are design to make the audiences laugh so much, with the expense of these poor criminals turned prank victims.
The Home Aloneseries basically portrays a young boy who was left alone and his plan to defend the house from burglars with some traps. While the traps themselves produced comedic effects that involve bodily injuries and humiliation, if you replicate these in real life, it will only resulted in disaster of lethal proportions. Some traps can even kill the recipient with just one blow. This movie franchise might be the greatest cinematic product ever made for the masses, but all comedic elements aside, this movie might be the deadliest holiday movie ever watched during holiday season. And despite these facts, Home Alonecontinues to be the holiday staple for the masses to enjoy during Christmas. And to close this, I know it’s still early (November 27 by the time of writing for God’s sake), but may you guys have a merry Christmas this upcoming December. This is the season to gather, enjoy the holidays with your friends and family and reflect on the year, en route to welcoming the New Year and a new decade.
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