Here's every time Daniel Stern's Marv should have died in the Home Alone movies. Home Alone was a concept originated by The Breakfast Clubs John Hughes, with the idea being born out of the filmmaker preparing a list of things he shouldn't forget before taking a family trip. He thought it would be funny to add his children to the list, sparking the whole concept. It's doubtful he, director Chris Columbus could have foreseen just how successful Home Alone would become, with the movie grossing over $400 million upon release in 1990.
Home Alone saw young Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) fighting off the "Wet Bandits," two dim-witted thieves played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. The movie was never intended to launch a franchise, but the box-office gross of the first entry saw Home Alone 2: Lost In New York - which co-starred Tim Curry - rushed into production, and while it just copies the formula of the original with more cartoonish violence, it's since become a Christmas favorite. Culkin refused a third movie, which instead featured a new protagonist played by Alex D. Linz. While a success, Home Alone 3's box-office was significantly lower than the first two, while the next two entries - Taking Back the House and The Holiday Heist - were poorly received TV movies with no returning cast.
The series received another outing with 2021's Home Sweet Home Alone, a legacy sequel that faced a similiar critical reception to the aforementioned TV movies. Regardless of the films that followed, the first two Home Alone movies are still considered classics to many and are on regular rotation during the holidays. While Pesci's "Wet Bandit" Harry takes a lot of punishment during that saga, it's Stern's Home Alone villain Marv who really goes through hell. Here's every booby trap that should have killed him, according to Honest Action.
Every Time Marv Should Have Died
Home Alone (1990)
- Iron In Laundry Chute: Death resulting from facial and cervical spine fractures with 2nd-degree burns.
- Hit With Snow Shovel: Death resulting from skull fracture with epidural hematoma.
Home Alone 2 (1992)
- Kevin Throwing Bricks: Hit four times with bricks, which should result in death from skull fracture with epidural hematoma
- Two-Story Fall: Death from multiple fractures and internal injuries.
- Electrified Sink: Death from severe burns & cardiac arrhythmia.
- Hit By Dry Cement Bag: Death from multiple spinal compression fractures.
- Hit By Pipe: Death via multiple fractures & c-spine fractures.
- Hit By Rolling Pipe: Death resulting from massive internal & external injuries
- Kerosene Rope Fall: Death from three-story fall resulting in multiple impact injuries
- Varnish Cans Dropped: Death thanks to internal organ rupture & traumatic brain injuries
The Home Alone movies established their own Looney Tunes-inspired style of violence, which made the cartoony endurance of Marv and Harry platable. If the movie had played the brutality of Kevin's booby traps straight, it would have been a horror movie instead. While Marv suffers through the first movie, the second movie featured some intense escalation. Even now, the bricks being dropped on his head is wince-inducing, and from being shot in the groin with a nail gun to having bags of cement dropped on his neck, he proves harder to kill than the Terminator.
Culkin, Stern and Pesci signed off on the Home Alone movies following the second movie, which was the best career move for all three. While Marv did return for Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House, he was recast with French Stewart and - quite bizarrely - looked and acted more like Pesci's Harry instead. This TV movie also appears to be a soft reboot of the story and was once intended to launch a show, and while it makes vague reference to the events of the first two, it's considered to be set in its own, separate continuity.