I've been a Carpenter fan pretty much since I first saw Halloween. I've now seen all his movies so many times that most of my DVDs are worn out requiring I replace them with new ones and/or Blu Rays. I've bought the region 2 DVDs just to get the Commentaries from Peter Jason and Roddy Piper. I had my wife watch The Thing on our first date so that I could know if our relationship was going to work out. So I'm a bit of a Carpenter mark, and when I saw porn was parodying what I consider to be holy and sacred movies I was a bit nervous.
I have just finished watching Smash's Halloween parody and I am prepared to say it's the 3rd or 4th best Halloween movie. It is more watchable than any of the Rob Zombie crap and most of the sequels. The original will always be the best, and I thought H2O was pretty enjoyable. I'd put the Smash parody and Halloween 2 as a pretty close 3rd or 4th. Obviously they are 2 movies that require different settings to watch but I'll watch Lily Labeau's performance over Busta Rhymes any damn day of the week.
This is a porn movie, and it's shot on a smaller budget than Hollywood movies so production costs and value are going to be different. That being said, the parts of the movie where the budget constraints show actually only serve to make it more fun to watch. Watch Marcus London's coat sticking out of the door as he drives away. Andy San Dimas blinking while laying dead on the bed. These things just added to my enjoyment of the movie since after all it is a porn parody. When parodying a horror movie you have to walk a thin line between staying true to the scary nature of the source but also keeping the mood light. Jim Powers and Smash do an excellent job of that. I much prefer the lighthearted approach than the mean and cruel remake that Rob Zombie did.
The attention to detail is really noticeable here. Smash tried to capture scenes and angles as Carpenter did. The closet scene with Lily Labeau was tremendous. The Shape does his situp perfectly. The head-cocked-to-the-side look at Lynda's impaled boyfriend is good. The first scene set in 1996 kept me looking for things that obviously didn't exist in 1996 and I didn't see any. There's a segment that sort of has a movie-within-the-movie and it's very enjoyable.
Obviously the story has to change a wee bit for business reasons. There's no children in this movie so Laurie's babysitter credentials are somewhat diminished, though she still talks to the "kids" who are never seen/heard. Anything involving school is pretty much removed so as to avoid any legal issues. There's also no drug use. Other than that, the story stays pretty true to it's source.
I have a few criticisms. I felt that occasionally the shot would linger a bit too long. The best example of this would be Michael's parents who are forced to cheese it up for way too long after his unmasking. Also the shots of Michael in the background were a little over the top in drawing the viewer's attention to the Shape. Those shots from the original still haunt me to this day, did we just see Michael, can't quite make out the features - thus his name given by Carpenter as The Shape. In this version most of those images lose their sting because Michael stands out, the shot is too tight so instead of being in the background, he's practically the centerpiece of the shot. Tough to do these things on a tight budget so I'm probably just nitpicking. The score is also decent, though it would be impossible for any score to top Carpenter's so it's unfair to compare the two.
Overall I think this movie is highly enjoyable. The sex is good and you can tell that Jim Powers probably watched Halloween quite a few times in preparing for this task. It doesn't take a shit all over Carpenter's work (yeah I'm lookin at you Rob Zombie), and it's fun to watch. Knowing Carpenter, I rather think he'd enjoy it as well.
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