One of the most memorable moments from the holiday classic Home Alone is the moment when Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) deceives a pizza man into leaving a whole cheese pizza at the door by making him believe he's about to get gunned down by some gangster with a "tommy gun."
The gangster is Johnny, and he's the violent, psychopathic star of Angels with Filthy Souls, which our young hero gets a huge kick out of.
The film should be a real classic...
...just look at this great footage!
Angels With Filthy Souls 1990 www.youtube.com
That is, if it actually existed.
Angels with Filthy Souls, believe it or not, is not real, though many people seemed to have believed it was.
The film-within-a-film is a spoof of Angels with Dirty Faces, a classic 1938 gangster flick starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and Humphrey Bogart.
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) Official Trailer - James Cagney Movie www.youtube.com
While I have been well aware that Angels with Filthy Souls is little more than a meta gag, others have not been so fortunate. And it was actor Seth Rogen who shattered childhoods across social media.
"My entire childhood, I thought the old timey movie that Kevin watches in Home Alone (Angels With Filthy Souls) was actually an old movie," he wrote.
That tweet was shared a rather absurd amount of times––and the reactions were ones of shock.
Just look at poor Chris Evans (Captain America himself).
Not to mention Big Mouth's Nick Kroll.
Kroll's comment prompted Rogen to leave the following response:
So many people didn't know!
This person did know, so let's give them some credit.
Oh, and this one, too.
Angels with Filthy Souls was the first portion of Home Alone to be filmed––because it was cheap and involved the use of cardboard sets.
The "film" proved such a crowd pleaser that a "sequel"––Angels with Even Filthier Souls––was filmed for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Angels With Even Filthier Souls www.youtube.com
Ralph Foody, the actor who played Johnny in the "film," appeared in several small parts in the 1980s and 1990s and can be seen in such films as Vice Versa (as a doorman) and Curly Sue (as a drifter).
He died in 1999 at the age of 71.
@WhiteHouse/X
