The mob movies Kevin watches in Home Alone aren’t actually real, and we’re speechless

Home Alone and Home Alone 2 are two of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. Every year, we watch as Kevin McCallister goes sledding down his staircase, eats a cheese pizza in a limousine, and rigs a house to catch the bad guys. We’ve seen the films a thousand times, and by now, we thought we knew everything about them. But we just learned something we never knew: the mob movies Kevin watches aren’t actually real. Um, we’re speechless right now.

One of the most memorable parts of the Home Alone films is Kevin’s love of mob movies. You know the ones: the black-and-white movies he watches at home on the couch and in his expensive suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Angels with Filthy Souls and its sequel, Angels with Even Filthier Souls, gave us the iconic lines “Keep the change, ya filthy animal” and “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.” Well, it turns out that those movies were made just for Home Alone.

The revelation came when Seth Rogen tweeted about it on Christmas day. “My entire childhood, I thought the old timey movie that Kevin watches in Home Alone (Angels With Filthy Souls) was actually an old movie,” Rogen wrote. Same, Seth. SAME.

Naturally, a TON of people had no idea.

Everybody sort of freaked out, because it never occurred to us that the movies weren’t real. They’re just so perfectly done.

Lo and behold, Rogen is right. According to the Home Alone Wikipedia page, Angels with Filthy Souls is a parody of the 1938 movie Angels with Dirty Faces.

Here’s the iconic scene where Kevin watches Angels with Filthy Souls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpfOhYRYv80?feature=oembed

And here he is watching Angels with Even Filthier Souls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tufjfFOYLq0?feature=oembed

Now, we’re left wondering what else is a lie. In Home Alone, when Kevin puts the video into the VHS player (RIP), you can see a stack of other movies on top, including a Bruce Springsteen concert tape and a Rolling Stones one. Then, in Home Alone 2, his VHS stack includes the titles The Ventilator, Fly Bait, and Muttville Massacre. We have a feeling the latter titles are inspired by crime movies of the same era, too.

We’re not saying that Seth Rogen ruined Christmas with his tweet about Home Alone. But, well, we’re not not saying it, either. Even though we’ll never watch the movies the same way again, they’re still some of our favorites.