Daniel Stern Reflects on Joe Pesci Biting Macaulay Culkin in ‘Home Alone’

Daniel Stern admits it wasn’t just the villains in Home Alone to fear!

The actor, 67, reflected on playing the mischievous but mindless criminal Marv in the hit holiday classic while speaking to Entertainment tonight. Among his memorable moments on set was when Joe Pesci – who played Marv’s lawless counterpart Harry – bit Macaulay Culkin, who starred as main character Kevin McCallister.

As the other half of the “wet bandits”, Harry was both the rash and the mastermind of their clumsy operation.

In one scene, Harry threatens to bite Kevin’s fingers off – but when Pesci took it a bit too far and actually bit the then 10-year-old, Culkin was left with a scar on his hand.

“Joe is wonderful and I love him — he’s a dear friend,” Stern gushed, before adding, “But he’s a scary guy!”

“He carried it all,” he continued. “We tried in the first movie to try to be scary to start with, and then you realize we’re idiots.”

Stern told ET that their goal with the film, which premiered in 1990, was to build the “fear factor” to set the drama in motion. It then gradually breaks down as Kevin pulls off his various pranks – like placing a tarantula directly on Marv’s face.

Stern’s assumption that they would use a “big prop spider” to film was wrong.

“The critter told me, ‘he’s not going to bite you, you’re going to be fine,'” he said, adding, “so I let him crawl around on my face for about five minutes, just so we both got used to each other.”

The tarantula literally called the shots, Stern said — if it crawled too far to one side of his face, the camera crew just had to wait for it to return to position.

The tarantula was used in the iconic scene where Marv throws the spider onto Harry, who is lying on the floor next to him. Marv had one goal – kill the spider – and was perfectly fine with attacking his partner in crime to do it.

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“I got to hit Joe Pesci with a crowbar, so that was fun, too,” Stern said of the moment his character swung at the spider.

Alone at home was — and is to this day — a “kid empowerment movie,” Stern said, which is why its popularity is still evident 34 years after its release.