The Lo-Down: Chris Verlod’s Top Five Villains of The Home Alone Movie Franchise
Dec 21, 2018, 12:00 AM | Updated: Jan 4, 2019, 11:38 am
(Photo by Barry King/WireImage)
By Chris Verlod
On the Lo-Down Damien and Jason asked me to come up with my list for the Top 5 Villains in Christmas Movie History. My first rule for the project was I did not want to pick a villain that gets rehabilitated at the end of the movie. Unfortunately for me that took out a huge number of villains. I couldn’t pick the Grinch from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. That meant it was a no for every Ebenezer Scrooge in the 15,286 Christmas Carol movies, and Frank Cross from Scrooged. You could make a case for Myron Larabee from Jingle All The Way because he used a bombed, and almost killed a kid, but the kid ended up giving him the special edition Turbo Man at the end of the movie, so that’s a little up in the air. BUT! There were two films that had evil villains who were not rehabilitated in the end, and those two movies are Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
I know I said that I was going to use villains from the Home Alone franchise, but I’m only doing the first and second. I looked up how many Home Alones there were and thought there were three, but apparently there are FIVE HOME ALONE MOVIES!!!!! But true Home Alone enthusiasts only recognize the first two. So, let’s get started!
Number Five: Buzz McCallister
In the first movie Buzz appears to just be a terrible older brother antagonizing his younger brother Kevin. In one of the first scenes in the film Buzz eats Kevin’s only pizza on purpose, and then acts like he is going to “barf it up” so that Kevin could have some.
Also, that is probably my favorite scene in any Christmas Movie of All-Time! In the Home Alone 2 we have seen Buzz turn into a true sociopath by embarrassing Kevin at the Christmas recital, faking an apology, and then antagonizing him after the fact. Buzz has grown up to be a monster.
Number Four: Mr. Hector The Concierge
In Home Alone 2 Kevin gets on the wrong flight and instead of going to Florida with the rest of his family he ends up in New York alone. Now, there are many adults that he runs across that should have known something was up, but that was more negligence. They were not trying to ruin Kevin McCallister’s life, but there was one adult that knew something was wrong. Mr. Hector The Concierge! From the moment Kevin ends up in the “World-Renowned Plaza Hotel,” he knew something was up. Instead of calling child services to try and find his parents, he tries to get him arrested for credit card fraud, and chases him into the cold dark New York City Streets.
Number 3: Random Chicago Cop
Back to Home Alone Kevin’s mother, Kate McCallister, realizes that Kevin isn’t on the plane and once they are in France immediately calls the police department to get her son. She goes through a back and forth with members at the police department, and finally gets them to send an officer to do a welfare check. The police officer shows up, knocks on the door a couple of times, and says, “There’s no one home. The house looks secure. Tell them to count their kids again.” This cop knows that there is a missing eight year old boy and he takes 15 seconds to look at the house and tells the parents to COUNT THEIR KIDS AGAIN!!!!! That is insane!
Number 2: Marv
Marv is partners with Harry and comes up with the name “The Wet Bandits,” they go around robbing houses of families that they know are on vacation, and plugs up drains and leaves the water running to flood the house. Kind of scummy, but not really evil. We don’t see evil Marv until Home Alone 2. There he decided to change the name of their duo to “The Sticky Bandits.” He wraps tape around his hand to steal money out of the Salvation Army buckets, and he has no problem going along with Harry’s plan to rob Duncan’s Toy Chest to steal their money, and money designated to go to a Children’s hospital.
Number 1: Harry
Harry is the brains of the operation. He’s the one that scopes out the houses in the first movie and comes up with the plan to rob Duncan’s Toy Chest in the second movie. He seems just as bad as Marv, but he takes it to the next level. They catch Kevin in the first Home Alone and both Harry and Marv say they are going to torture Kevin with all the devices that he used on them, but then Harry goes medieval and says he’s going to start by BITING OFF EVERYONE OF KEVIN’S FINGERS ONE BY ONE!
Luckily for Kevin his neighbor Marley saves him and the Wet Bandits are arrested. In Home Alone 2 Harry isn’t screwing around. He just straight up gets a gun and tell’s Kevin he’s going to kill him. This isn’t a threat, he is ready to shoot Kevin in the face until the Pigeon Lady shows up to save him. When you’re threatening to bite a kid’s fingers off and then try to murder him in central park. I don’t think it gets any more evil than that.