Argentine cinematographer Julio Macat has worked behind the camera on several films during his 35-year career, but it’s the 1990 classic Christmas comedy Home Alone that he says is his favorite. It’s also the movie within that movie that he remembers fondly.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Macat discussed Angels With Filthy Souls, the faux gangster movie featured in Home Alone that Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) watches for the first time while eating mounds of ice cream. If you’ve ever repeated the line, “keep the change, you filthy animal,” you know exactly what we’re talking about.
Angels With Filthy Souls was Macat’s homage to a real noir-style film, 1938’s Oscar-nominated Angels With Dirty Faces, which starred James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. In Macat’s version, late actor Ralph Foody played the tommy gun-toting main gangster Johnny who gives another character “till the count of 10 to get [his] ugly, yella, no-good keister off [his] property before [he] pumps his guts full of lead.”
Later in the film, Kevin uses the movie to trick a pizza delivery guy into thinking he’s talking to a very irate customer. Then, Kevin makes one of the main robbers (Daniel Stern) think something shady is happening inside the house by playing the movie loudly and popping fireworks near the back door.
“What really helped was being in Chicago and having those theater actors,” Macat told HR. “We shot that whole thing in one day. We did it quickly.”
A second installment of the gangster flick, Angels With Even Filthier Souls, was featured in the sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Now that December is right around the corner, “Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.”