Joe Pesci kept his Wet Bandit promise and bit Macaulay Culkin during Home Alone rehearsals

In the grand scheme of things, Kevin McCallister, the enterprising booby trapper abandoned by his family at Christmas in Home Alone, got off easy. After an hour of torturing the Wet Bandits, Marv (Daniel Stern) and Harry (Joe Pesci) finally get their fingerless gloves on little Kevin. “What are we going to do to him, Harry?” “We’ll do exactly what he did to us.” Before being rescued by the kindly old neighbor Kevin spent the film profiling, the Bandits promise to burn Kevin’s head with a blow torch, smash his face with an iron, slap his face with a paint can, and shove a nail through his foot. But the first thing Harry promises to do is “bite off every one of [Kevin’s] little fingers one at a time.” Pesci came closest with that last one. During one of his [A Nostalgic Night With Macaulay Culkin tour stops last week, Culkin revealed that Harry’s final threat nearly came to fruition. Pesci bit Culkin during rehearsal and left a scar.

Culkin spent this holiday season touring Home Alone around the country and offering fans a chance to ask the original Jigsaw about the film. During a show in Rosemont, Illinois, Culkin recalled the infamous biting. He claims that Pesci “was trying to scare me,” believing tooth-on-skin pressure would help the scene. “He was like, I want to be menacing to this kid.” Living in the scene, Pesci, who probably only answered to “Harry” on set or something, took things too far and actually bit Culkin. “I have a scar,” Culkin said. However, Pesci took the bite much harder than the then-10-year-old actor. “I saw his face—and I’ve never, ever seen Joe Pesci actually scared. Because he’s like, I just bit a kid!”

Like actors putting the Batsuit on for the first time, a power flushes through the performer’s system when makeup puts a gold cap on an actor’s tooth. We know it’s difficult, but actors should do their best not to bite their 10-year-old co-stars if possible.

[via The New York Times]