Out of the plethora of Christmas films available out there, very few festive movies can actually be classed as good ones. Many of them are watchable at best, and most of them are - to put it bluntly - a bit crap. However, there are a few sparkling gems within the mix. The Grinch seems to be a popular choice amongst many people, as do
and It's a Wonderful Life.
For many of us, though, there can only be one film to take the top spot: Home Alone. The 1990 masterpiece starring
has everything you'd ever want from a movie - family drama, hilariously incompetent
bad guys, and, of course, gratuitous
violence.
However, as entertaining as it may be to watch a bumbling robber get scorched on the noggin with the flame of a blow torch, I wonder how many of us have actually questioned the true extent of Kevin McCallister's attacks on the home invaders.
As it turns out, at least one person has taken the time to calculate exactly how bad the Wet Bandits' injuries should have been. And, honestly, they're a lot worse than I would have expected.
Jake Roper, who forms part of the Vsauce team on YouTube, went through the film and made careful notes on exactly what sort of wounds Harry and Marv sustained using his knowledge of "thermal dynamics, mechanical engineering, and just physics in general".
Using a ballistics dummy, Roper recreated two of Kevin's most brutal assaults: the scorching hot door handle and the paint can to the face. Surprisingly, while a lot of the attacks would have resulted in a severe amount of damage - these two in particular could have actually caused a fatality.
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It turns out that Kevin's doorknob stunt was actually a really dumb move, as the interior of the door reached a dangerously hot temperature before the outside even got warmer than an average person's bath. More to the point - the interior of the door actually started to catch fire a little bit before the outside was hot enough to glow.
So, while Harry probably wouldn't have branded his palm with the imprint of the handle, there is a good chance that Kevin could have actually set his whole house ablaze by using the heater.
The paint can, on the other hand, definitely would have stopped the robbers dead in their tracks. And just dead in general, really.
A slow-motion shot of the ballistics dummy getting walloped in the chops with a full can of paint showed that - had it been a real person - the individual would have suffered a snapped neck, a severely disfigured face, and, most likely, a trip to the morgue.
As an extra bonus, Roper also tested out how damaging the crowbar blow to the chest would be (which, if you don't remember, happens when Marv tries to smack Buzz's tarantula off of Harry's body). It turns out that this was probably the most damaging action of all, as the recreation of the attack resulted in seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a direct blow to the heart.
So, the next time you put this film on for your kids or younger relatives, just remember that you're actually showing them a compilation of should-be murders.
!
