Home Alone is considered to be the most popular Christmas movie of all time, with perhaps the exception of It’s a Wonderful Life. There are, however, some behind-the-scenes truths that the average viewer doesn’t know about the film that could actually change the way you feel about it. First off, all the snow you see throughout the movie is not really snow — in fact, it’s potato flakes. Another fantasy in the movie is the black-and-white movie Angels With Filthy Souls, the Depression-era gangster flick that Kevin pops into his VCR while he’s……well……home alone — it never actually existed. Instead, the movie-within-a-movie that contained the famous line, “Keep the change, ya filthy animal!”, was created specifically for Home Alone. The 80-second clip was shot inside an abandoned high school in early 1990. The house that Kevin lived in was purported to be in Chicago, but the real house is actually in Winnetka, Illinois. Most of the film wasn’t even shot inside the house. They built an entire set at a local high school — in fact, it was the same school where Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was shot. Stuntmen performed many of the reactions to the booby traps that Kevin set, and the stuntmen were working without a harness during filming, which made the crew really nervous. Last, but not least, the famous scene where Kevin lets out a scream after applying aftershave for the first time was improvised. He was supposed to slap his face and then pause and scream, but he kept his hands there because it was a little kid thing to do. As it turned out, that scene was what solidified the film and is the most famous scene in the entire movie.
