Tim Curry Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

While Tim Curry’s most iconic role may forever be Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for many, his portrayal of the supposedly “stick up his ass” concierge, Mr. Hector, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is its own breed of legendary. Indeed, although technically “only” a supporting role, from the instant that Curry first appears onscreen just as the first act comes to a close (around the twenty-eight-minute mark), it’s hard to take one’s eyes off of him. Not just because he has a generally magnetic face, but because he so effectively portrays this highly mistrustful and a little bit smarmy character. And yet, for as much as Mr. Hector is meant to be one of the irksome “villains” in Kevin McCallister’s (Macaulay Culkin) latest antics-filled adventure, a reevaluation of his character is long overdue.

After all, when one reexamines Kevin’s behavior alone (whether at home or in a hotel), it’s plain to see he was more than just “a bit” of a menace (who one could have easily envisioned playing the eponymous character in 1993’s Dennis the Menace, also written by John Hughes). The type of child whose comportment indicated early on that he would probably end up in prison. But, then again, no—Kevin is exactly the sort of white boy to get away with everything for his entire life. And that seems, ultimately, to be what Kevin represents to Mr. Hector: someone who gets away with things because of his “angelic aura” and, well, his social class. So it is that he tells his co-worker/the bellhop, Cedric (Rob Schneider), upon further studying Kevin—and not being convinced at all of his “innocence”—as he checks into the hotel using his father’s credit card, “Find out everything you can about that young fellow” (and yes, there’s a lot of what Curry does in this movie that comes across as decidedly gay innuendo-leaning—for he is, in the end, still Dr. Frank-N-Furter).

Cedric, of course, proves useless in this task and doesn’t have much of a vested interest in Kevin after he’s “tipped” in gum once he shows him his room (a princely suite that, at the time, was three-hundred-fifty-five dollars a night). So maybe it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock (though it’s definitely a major violation of privacy) that Mr. Hector decides to figure things out for himself by going up to Kevin’s room and snooping around to see what’s really happening here. To that point, viewers often seem to forget that, as the concierge, Mr. Hector does have a kind of “eyes and ears of the institution” responsibility. Necessitating his “passion-turned-obsession” for figuring out what’s going on right underneath the hotel management’s nose.

Then again, if Mr. Hector is so thorough and detail-oriented, it’s difficult to feel sympathy, at times, for him when he can’t even pick up on the very obvious detail that there’s something not quite “right” about the silhouette he walks in on showering, which is actually just a blow-up clown that Kevin happens to have on hand for, apparently, “emergency situations” like this (though it was a Christmas gift he chose to pack when he thought Miami was his final destination). And then he “animates” it with a pull-string rig and his Talkboy playback recorder that gets Uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman) to scream at Mr. Hector as he actually did to Kevin earlier in the movie.

Horrified to be caught so red-handed in his infiltration efforts, Mr. Hector scurries out of there tout de suite (no hotel room pun intended), knocking over a superfluous side table on his way out. And yet, such pride does he have in his job that he actually pauses amidst his pain to pick up the table and arrange it as it was before continuing to limp out the door.

The following morning, he puts his best obsequious act on for Kevin, asking how everything is and instructing him that his limo and cheese pizza, “compliments of the Plaza Hotel,” is waiting for him outside. Kevin isn’t having any of it, making it clear that his “father” was appalled by being walked in on/spied on last night. So it is that he walks away leaving Mr. Hector with his tail still between his legs. Not for long though. Because, like any hunting dog, Hector can’t stop sniffing around, continuing to pick up the scent of something very fishy indeed. So it is that he goes to the “database” of credit cards (a.k.a. a box filled with a library card catalogue-like setup) they have on file behind the desk to pull out the one that belongs to Peter McCallister (John Heard). He enters the number into the reader and finds that, once he does, the word “STOLEN” shows up on the small black screen. And it’s exactly what Mr. Hector needed to feel good about himself again. Or rather, good about how adept he is at his job.

Of course, that feeling goes out the window when Kevin escapes, bamboozling him and a few of his co-workers in the process with his Angels with Filthy Souls gambit. Later, when Peter and Kevin’s mom, Kate (Catherine O’Hara), show up in New York after being summoned by the credit card transaction findings at The Plaza, Mr. Herbert is made to feel like little more than some sort of whipping boy for his so-called incompetency when, in fact, Kevin is technically the “shithead” in the scenario for running away. Refusing to be found by his parents, as it were. But no, Mr. Hector ends up getting slapped (close enough to a whipping for the early 90s) by Kate when he suggests she shouldn’t try to go looking for Kevin in the dark of night. Prime “hundreds of parasites out there armed to the teeth” time. At least, that’s how Mr. Hector describes it.

Alas, the only “parasite” he seems to be dealing with throughout Home Alone 2 is Kevin. And yet, as the “worker” in the scenario, he’s made out to be some sort of antagonizing “bad guy” when it comes to his dynamic with a, frankly, spoiled brat. Then, when his parents come along, that dynamic augments all the more, with Mr. Hector taking a literal beating for merely trying to do his job and then ending up as the patsy taking the fall for “losing” Kevin when, truth be told, it was his parents that did so…yet again.