The Home Alone burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) suffer some very painful injuries from Kevin McCallister’s (Macaulay Culkin) boobytrapped home security system, and it’s hard to tell if real people would even be able to survive some of the inventive kid’s traps. Home Alone is the ’90s Christmas classic that sees the large, sprawling McCallister family leaving for a vacation to Paris. During the chaotic departure to the airport, the youngest son Kevin is left at home. Kevin revels in his time alone until Harry and Marv, the “Wet Bandits”, decide to rob his house, bringing the three characters into a slapstick and Rube Goldberg-fueled confrontation.
The cast of Home Alone includes an ensemble of unique and memorable characters but none may be as treasured as Harry and Marv. In the first film, these two bumbling but still surprisingly threatening thieves use Christmastime as a chance to rob people’s empty homes. What they don’t count on is Kevin being a mastermind of deadly traps. Pesci and Stern are singular as a duo, and their characterization as both menacing and ridiculous is important because it makes the painful beatdown they receive that much more comedic. However, some of the boobytraps the Home Alone burglars come across actually feel like they could kill whoever stumbles into them.
Marv & Harry Are Shot With A BB Gun
Marv and Harry’s first attempt to get into the McCalister house puts them face-to-face with their opponent. They try to trick Kevin into letting them inside the home, but Harry is greeted by a BB gun silently protruding from the dog door and is shot right in the groin. After Harry falls away shrieking and cursing, Marv tries his luck. He sticks his head through the dog door only to find himself staring down the barrel of Kevin’s BB gun. One shot to the forehead later, and both Marv and Harry are ready to drop any pretense and break into the home however they can.
A BB gun bullet can’t cause enough damage to kill in most circumstances, but it can hurt very much. One doctor interviewed by Thrillist said that a BB fired at close range could break the skin, but will not penetrate the skull. It was definitely not a welcome surprise for either Marv or Harry to be shot up close by an air-powered rifle, but it certainly was never going to kill either of the burglars.
Marv & Harry Fall Down The Stairs Multiple Times
When Marv and Harry split up and go to the basement and front door respectively, they find out that Kevin has sprayed the outdoor steps with water, resulting in a slick, icy coating. Marv slides down the long stairway to the basement and Harry slips and falls multiple times on his way to the front door. Each fall looks and sounds incredibly painful, with the pair cartwheeling and slamming onto their backs. Marv and Harry staring up into the sky with their breath knocked out will never not be funny, but it doesn’t seem like an injury they could easily walk away from.
According to MedLegal360, falling from stairs is a significant cause of injury and even death with more than 12,000 people dying each year due to falls from stairs. One doctor notes, that due to Marv and Harry’s ages and the severity of their falls, neither of the burglars would have been able to get up from the ground (via Thrillist). Broken bones and deep tissue bruises could be the least of their worries; internal bleeding would be the biggest threat and could very well lead to both their deaths in the event they don’t receive medical care.
Marv Is Hit In The Face With An Iron
The falling iron is one of the early boobytraps that Marv falls victim to. Finally managing to break into Kevin’s home through the basement, Marv carefully walks in looking for traps. He grabs a pull chain to turn on a light and has a brief moment of surprise when the chain and light bulb are pulled right down. Up above him, a clothes iron is pulled down by a string attached to the light bulb and falls through a laundry shoot, right onto his face. Marv is left knocked to the ground with a red, iron-shaped print on his face.
According to a health professional, that iron would have caused more damage than a scar on Marv’s face (via Mental Floss). The iron falls a full story, so at least 14 feet, and slams into his eye. A heavy clothes iron could weigh as much as four pounds and this would be enough force to potentially fracture Marv’s orbital bone, causing blindness and even irreparable structural damage. So it may not kill him, but Marv would probably not have been able to make his way any further into the McCallister home.
Harry’s Hand Is Burnt By A Doorknob
After making his way up the icy steps, the first sign that getting into the McCallisters’ house will not be so easy, Harry grabs the doorknob of the front door. Earlier in the film, Kevin was shown heating the doorknob on the opposite side, so When Harry grabs the metal knob, it burns his hand, leaving a red “M” insignia on the burglar’s palm. It’s one of the funniest traps Kevin sets in Home Alone from Pesci’s reaction to the visual gag of the letter branded into his hand.
On the topic of a hand being burnt by a doorknob, one doctor says, “Second degree burns would be caused. Blistering of the tissue, deep blistering… I don’t think the actual scar would remain forever.” (via Thrillist) Harry would certainly not be killed by the heated doorknob and the real-life reaction would probably be very similar to Harry’s in the movie. The mark may not last forever on his palm, but it would certainly cause enough pain that grabbing and handling whatever he hoped to steal would not be easy.
Harry’s Scalp Is Set On Fire
The scalding hot front door knob sends Harry scurrying to the back of the house to try again. Upon finally managing to push open the door, Harry is greeted by a blowtorch aimed right at his head. When he opens the door, a trigger is pulled, and the blowtorch erupts over Harry’s scalp. After one of the movie’s funniest visual gags of Pesci frozen in fear and pain, Harry runs back into the snow to put out his flaming head revealing his hat and the top of his hair has burned off.
A doctor interviewed by Mental Floss has this to say about Harry’s injury:
“What was likely a simple second-degree skin burn is now a full thickness burn likely to cause necrosis of the calavarium (skull bone).” That means the skin and bone tissue on Harry’s skull will be so damaged and rotted that his skull bone is essentially dying and will likely require a transplant.”
It does not help that Harry remained motionless as his head was lit on fire. The amount of damage he would have received in real life would probably be enough to kill him. It resulted in one of the worst injuries either Marv or Harry received in Home Alone and would have been even worse in real life.
Marv Steps On A Nail & Christmas Ornaments
While Harry is still trying to get inside, Marv is in the basement, shaking off the iron that just hit his face. He makes his way up the stairs after losing his shoes thanks to sticky tar on the steps and receives one of the more wince-inducing injuries in Home Alone. His foot lands on an upright nail sticking out of the floorboard. After this, in pain and frustration, Marv heads back outside and attempts to crawl through a window as another point of entry, but Kevin is one step ahead. Marv crawls through the window only to land barefoot on scattered Christmas ornaments, resulting in another cringe-inducing foot injury.
Neither the glass ornaments nor the nail looks like they could prove fatal in any way, but they could certainly cause complications later if the wounds are left untreated (via Thrillist). Tetanus would be a worry with the rusty nail and could have penetrated far enough to cause deep tissue damage, but the pain would be the worst part. The glass and nail combined would make for a very unpleasant experience as Marv continued through the house.
Henry & Marv Are Hit By Paint Cans
After Marv and Harry are finally able to get inside the house, they are more concerned with getting revenge on Kevin than they are robbing the place. When they see him at the top of the stairs, they can’t help but rush up after him, despite knowing the young boy is more than capable of springing painful traps on them. The Home Alone burglars run up the stairs only to have two filled paint cans swung down straight into their faces, sending them flying down the stairs.
According to one doctor, the force taken from Kevin’s pendulum trap should have been enough to knock the burglars out cold (via Mental Floss):
“Assuming the paint can is full (roughly 10 pounds) and the rope is 10 feet long, Marv and Harry each take a roughly 2 kilo-newton hit to the face. That is easily enough to fracture multiple facial bones, and is probably going to knock you out cold. Also, I wouldn’t expect either of the Wet Bandits to walk away from this with all of their teeth.”
The doctor fails to mention that both Marv and Harry are also sent down the stairs after they’re hit, adding another layer of danger to this trap. Both could have been easily killed depending on where on their heads the paint cans connected. Furthermore, they could have landed on something like their head or neck, easily resulting in death.
Henry & Marv Fall From The Zipline
Kevin has unleashed all his boobytraps by the end of the film and yet Marv and Harry still find the energy to chase after him, driven mostly by spite. As a last resort, Kevin leaves his home altogether by ziplining from an upstairs window to his tree house. Two stories above the ground, Marv and Harry scamper along the zipline, thinking they’ve finally cornered Kevin. However, Kevin once again gets the best of the Home Alone burglars and cuts the line with garden shears sending the pair swinging down like Tarzan straight into a brick wall.
Though it isn’t a straight fall down, Marv and Harry have a lot of momentum behind them as they swing into the side of the house. A medical professional says, “They would not get up from this one…Would need a cervical collar for a while.” After everything the pair have been through, this fall from the second floor would probably be the literal nail in their coffins. Beaten, broken, and battered, if the Home Alone burglars could have actually survived until this point, this last boobytrap would have killed them.
