FAQ for
Home Alone (1990) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Home Alone can be found here.

No. Home Alone is based on a screenplay by producer John Hughes. However, the movie has been novelized by Todd Strasser. The concept for Home Alone came from a scene in Uncle Buck (1989) in which Macaulay Culkin, who plays Kevin McCallister in Home Alone and Miles Russell in Uncle Buck, fires off a series of questions to a would-be-babysitter through a letterbox opening in the front door. Due to the success of Home Alone, three movie sequels have since been released: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Home Alone 3 (1997), and Home Alone 4 (2002).

The Home Alone house is a private residence in the village of Winnetka, Illinois, about 20 miles north of Chicago. More information about the house, as well as other filming locations in the Illinois area, can be found here.

Kevin has two brothers, Jeff (Michael C. Maronna) and Buzz (Devin Ratray), and two sisters, Megan (Hillary Wolf) and Linnie (Angela Goethals). This is corroborated by the number of stockings hanging on their fireplace -- two large ones and five smaller ones -- the family photo to which Kevin says goodnight when he's watching The Johnny Carson Show, and also in the scene where Kevin tells Santa he only wants his family back, nothing but Peter, Kate, Buzz, Megan, Linnie, and Jeff. Jeff is the one who throws his bag down the stairs and shouts "bomb's away". Megan is the one who calls Kevin "completely helpless". Linnie is the one who counts him among "les incompetents". Peter (John Heard) and Kate (Catherine O'Hara) McCallister are their parents. Of the other eight people staying overnight at the McCallisters' house, Uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman) and Aunt Leslie (Terrie Snell) McCallister must be the parents of the three kids wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses -- Rod (Jedidiah Cohen), Brooke (Anna Slotky), and Fuller (Kieran Culkin). The oldest cousin, Heather McCallister (Kristin Minter), says that her parents live in Paris. Tracy (Senta Moses) (the girl with the long, kinky hair who is looking for shampoo) and Sondra (Daiana Campeanu) (the girl with the braided hair) both tell the "policeman" that their parents don't live there. Final proof of Kevin having four brothers and sisters is in the scene where only Jeff, Buzz, Megan, and Linnie return from Paris with Peter. Apparently, everyone else is still in Paris.

The novelization says that his Dad is a successful businessman and his Mom is a fashion designer, which accounts for all the dress mannikins that Kevin used to stage the "party".

During the night, there was a windstorm that blew down some tree branches on their power lines, cutting off their electricity and resetting their alarm clocks.

In the scramble to get on the airplane, the ticket may have been overlooked. Another possibility is that Kevin's ticket was tossed in the trash when his father wiped up after Kevin spilled milk all over the passports and tickets. Look closely at the trash, and you'll see what looks like a ticket nestled inside the red napkins. Without a ticket for Kevin, no one apparently noticed that he was not in the group.

Kevin saw the family cars in the garage and concluded that the family had NOT gone to the airport, so he didn't know that they were on their way to Paris. In his eight year old imagination, he believed that he really wished his family to disappear. After that, he's afraid to go to the police because he thinks that he would get in trouble for stealing (albeit accidentally) the toothbrush. This is evidenced by his earlier line: "I'm a criminal".

Not in the movie. In the book, his name was Axel.

No. That movie, titled Angels with Filthy Souls on the video cassette, was created for Home Alone. However, it was patterned after a real movie...Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) starring James Cagney.

Since the movie didn't show how Kevin cleared the ice from the porchsteps nor how he removed the tar from the basement steps, we can only make some guesses. One is that it got warm enough overnight to melt the ice (highly unlikely). Another is that the new-fallen snow sufficiently covered the ice so that it was no longer slippery. A third possibility is that Kevin spread salt on the ice after the "Wet Bandits", Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern), are taken away by the police. Finally, his family may have noticed or assumed that the steps were icy and held on to the railings for support as they approached the front door. As for the tar on the basement steps, his mom and dad probably had a bit of cleaning to do.

Kate is able to make it as far as Scranton, Pennsylvania, but she cannot get a flight from Scranton to Chicago. Overhearing her plight about the need to get home to her son, Gus Polinski (John Candy), polka king of the Midwest, offers her a lift in the truck he has rented with fellow musicians, the Kenosha Kickers, in order to get them to Milwaukee, about 90 miles north of Chicago. On Christmas morning, Kevin wakes up in hopes that his family has returned, but the house is still empty. Suddenly, his mom comes through the front door. After a big hug, Kate explains that the rest of the family couldn't get a flight back. Just then, the door opens, and his dad and four siblings come in, having taken the morning flight from Paris that Kate didn't want to wait for. In the final scene, Kevin looks out the window to see Old Man Marley (Roberts Blossom), whom Buzz calls "the South Bend Shovel Slayer", being reunited with his son and the family from whom he's been estranged for years. Suddenly, Buzz's voice can be heard yelling in the background, "Kevin! What did you do to my room?"