Daniel Stern admits that it wasn’t just the villains to be afraid of in the movie Home Alone!
The actor, 67, reflected on his role as mischievous but mindless criminal Marv in the hit holiday classic while speaking with Party tonight. Among his memorable moments on set was when Joe Pesci — who played Marv’s illegal doppelganger Harry — bit Macaulay Culkin, who played child protagonist Kevin McCallister.
As the other half of the “Wet Bandits”, Harry was both quick-witted and the mastermind behind their clumsy operation.
In one scene, Harry threatens to bite off Kevin’s fingers – but when Pesci goes a bit overboard and actually bites the then 10-year-old, Culkin is left with a scar on his arm.
Pesci and Stern behind Macaulay Culkin as Harry, Marv and Kevin.
Century Fox Film Corp
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“Joe is wonderful and I love him — he’s a dear friend,” Stern said before adding, “But he’s an awesome guy!”
“He carried everything,” he continued. “We tried in the first movie to actually be scary at first, and then you realize we’re idiots.”
Stern told ET that their goal for the film, which premiered in 1990, was to build a “fear factor” to set up the drama. It then gradually falls apart as Kevin pulls his various pranks — like putting a tarantula directly on Marv’s face.
Stern’s assumption that he would use a “big prop spider” for the shoot was wrong.
“The wrangler told me ‘he’s not going to bite you, you’re going to be fine,'” he said, adding, “So I let him crawl on my face for about five minutes, just to get us both used to each other.”
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The tarantula literally made up its mind, Stern said — if it crawled too far to one side of its face, the camera crew just had to wait for it to return to its seat.
The tarantula was used in the iconic scene where Marv throws the spider at Harry, who is lying on the floor next to him. Marv had one goal – to kill the spider – and he was perfectly fine attacking his partner in crime to do it.
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“I got to hit Joe Pesci with a crowbar, so that was fun, too,” Stern said of the moment his character took a swing at the spider.
Alone in the house it was — and remains to this day — “an empowering movie for kids,” Stern said, which is why its popularity is still evident 34 years after its release.
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Source: HIS Education