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Fear of a Black Hat
R0 - America - Hen's Tooth Video Review written by and copyright: James-Masaki Ryan (18th April 2015). |
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The Film
 “Fear of a Black Hat” is introduced by the film’s interviewer Nina Blackburn, who is making a year-long documentary about the rap group “N.W.H.”, short for “Niggas With Hats”, a three piece group with rappers “Ice Cold” and “Tasty Taste”, and DJ “Tone Def”. The group has censorship challenging songs such as “My Peanuts” and “Grab Your Dick”, which causes trouble with the law on obscenity and also with conservative groups, although the group tries to justify in their interviews albeit with unconvincing arguments. The group also justifies their reasoning for wearing hats as a form of anti-slavery and anti-white oppression, refusing to take off their hats for anyone. As for the three members: Ice Cold is the lead rapper of the group, the philosophical yet vulgar one who believes in full artistic expression. Tasty Taste is the wild one, with a taste for violence and anger. Tone Def is the quiet DJ, who has mad skills at the decks, and although part of a group with vulgar and violent lyrics, is the man of peace at heart. The start of the film shows the group’s time just prior to big success, where they have problems getting into their own venue and have to be a supporting act to their rival rap group “The Jam Boys”, and their indie record label for not wanting to release their upcoming album for having controversial artwork and obscene songs. Eventually by switching labels the group finally sees big success with their album “Guerillas in the Midst”, which goes platinum and spawns unexpected hit singles. With fame comes fortune as the members buy lavish houses and money becomes no object. But with that fame comes a price, as their artistic integrity is challenged by the record label to make more commercial sounding songs and music videos, and “bitches and hoes” affect their personal lives. But how long will their success last? Will they fall victim to record label expectations and alienate fans? Will they ever take off their hats? You’ll just have to see for yourself. With the early 90’s being the time when rap fully crossed over into the mainstream, with albums such as Public Enemy’s successful and controversial “Fear of a Black Planet”, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube’s gangsta rap debut solo album “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”, A Tribe Called Quest’s influential jazzy debut “People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm”, MC Hammer’s multiplatinum “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em”, and mockable but highly successful Vanilla Ice’s “To The Extreme” featuring “Ice Ice Baby” being the first rap song to hit the number 1 spot on the Billboard charts. And that was all just in one year in 1990! Later there were huge movements in the gangsta rap genre with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, alternative rap with Arrested Development and P.M. Dawn, the weed-a-licious stylings of Cypress Hill, and also women taking a prominent role in the rap game with Queen Latifah and Salt 'N' Pepa. With such a big movement, a parody movie was inevitable. “Fear of a Black Hat” took the mockumentary style of “This Is Spinal Tap” to the hip hop genre. N.W.H. is not a real rap group, neither are The Jam Boys or the interviewer Nina Blackburn. N.W.H. is an obvious nod to N.W.A. (AKA Niggas With Attitude), the title of the film is a nod to Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet”, while many of the scenes within the film and the other rappers in the film are parodies. White rapper Vanilla Sherbert who gets a beatdown is the aforementioned Vanilla Ice, music video director Jike Spingleton is a cross between Spike Lee and John Singleton, and rappers Ice Tray, Ice Coffee, Ice Box etc. are takes on the numerous rappers with the “Ice” moniker such as Ice-T and Ice Cube. There are quite a lot of references to "Spinal Tap" in the film, with N.W.H.’s previous managers dying under mysterious circumstances and when Tasty Taste showing off his massive gun collection to the interviewer. There was supposed to be an additional scene in which the members of N.W.H. found the corpses of Spinal Tap after getting lost backstage, but wasn’t filmed due to budgetary and time constraints. It’s hard to take such a movie seriously, and you shouldn’t. The film has a lot of hilarious moments which will guarantee to make you laugh even if you are not familiar to rap music or the rappers they are parodying. But it’s not just about being funny, as the film does show the more serious mindset of the time with police brutality referencing the Rodney King L.A. riots, racial profiling, and gun control issues, which goes to show that a lot of things haven’t changed in the last 20 years. In order to get financing and production support for making a full length film, director and writer Rusty Cundieff made a short version of “Fear of a Black Hat” on 3/4 inch video on a budget of $600. The short was shown to various production companies, but he was turned down everywhere. First was that Cundieff had no feature film directing experience and only minor acting experience. Another was the fact that the hip-hop parody film “CB4” starring Chris Rock was already in production at Universal. Fortunately with the backing of “Menace II Society” producer Darin Scott, a budget of $999,999 (just a dollar shy of a million dollar movie), production company ITC backed the project. Similar in fashion to “This Is Spinal Tap”, the film was not written fully, but an outline was made, and the cast rehearsed and improvised most of the dialogue. For casting, Cundieff played Ice Cold while actors Larry B. Scott (who starred in "The Karate Kid" and "Revenge of the Nerds") played Tasty Taste and Mark Christopher Lawrence (who is probably most famous for playing "Big Mike" on the TV series "Chuck") played Tone Def. The supporting cast was made of comedians, actors, and even some people in the music industry. One very noticeable person playing himself is Kurt Loder from MTV in the MTV News segments. If you are looking for recognizable names, there are very few. Most of the performers in the film have not had big careers in the film world, ending up in many bit parts rather than recognizable roles. Without name recognition like rival film “CB4” which had Saturday Night Live players Chris Rock, Chris Elliot, Phil Hartman, and rappers Ice-T, Ice Cube, and Flavor Flav playing themselves, “Fear of a Black Hat” was a harder sell. Not only that but “CB4” was released in 1993 and was a box-office bomb. ITC decided to shelve the film until a year after “CB4” to avoid comparisons, and premiered it at the Sundance Film Festival at a midnight screening. It became the first Sundance Midnight film to completely sell out, and it was given extra nights for screenings. The critics gave the film excellent reviews and the Sundance crowd reactions were very positive. Unfortunately the film failed to find a mainstream audience when released theatrically, grossing less than a quarter of its budget. It is no means a masterpiece of filmmaking. There are quite a lot of amateur acting skills as well as some pretty uninspired camerawork that does not show the illusion of a documentary (like when Ice gets pulled over or the stand-off scene in the bedroom). Director Rusty Cundieff later became much more prominent in the television world, directing episodes for comedy TV series such as "The Chappelle Show", "Chocolate News", and "The Wanda Sykes Show". The music is surprisingly good and also very funny. The jabs the film makes to artists like C+C Music Factory and Sir-Mix-A-Lot and their songs were particularly well parodied. There aren’t any particularly “bad” songs on the soundtrack, as they are well produced and humorous, and the intentionally bad songs are intentionally bad. Note this is a region free NTSC DVD and can be played on any Blu-ray or DVD player worldwide
Video
“Fear of a Black Hat” was first released in the US by Columbia TriStar in 2001. Unfortunately the picture was a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer and the picture looked pretty terrible. The DVD was finally issued in the UK by Network in 2006 (reviewed here) but unfortunately it was in a 1.33:1 pan and scan fullscreen transfer. Distribution rights in the US changed to Hen’s Tooth Video, and they released the film on DVD in 2008. Sadly, this DVD is pretty much a port of the Columbia TriStar DVD, with the same non-anamorphic 1.85:1 NTSC transfer. Colors are flat, reds bleed, and looks very noisy. Also, the master was not created from the originally shot on 16mm film, but from a release print so you can see cigarette burns every 10 minutes or so. Watching a non-anamorphic DVD on a high-def screen really shows how far picture quality has come over the years. Although it is watchable and not as bad as some of the headache inducing picture quality of the bonus materials (more on that later).
Audio
English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo The soundtrack is music heavy, and it would have benefited to have a 5.1 upgrade. Dialogue is centered and the music sounds good, so there are no big complaints. Optional English HoH subtitles are available, in a white font. Strangely, every time a contraction is spelled like it’s, that’s, don’t, etc. the subtitles write them out with quotation marks. For example a subtitle sentence like: So, guys, what's the deal with the hats? It is written: So, guys, “what's” the deal with the hats?
Extras
When Columbia TriStar released the DVD, the extras were surprisingly plentiful for such an underperforming film. The Hen’s Tooth DVD ports almost all the extras. The extras are as follows: Audio commentary with writer/director/actor Rusty Cundieff Music Videos (35:15 total) - "Grab Yo Stuff" - "Guerrillas in the Midst" - "Booty Juice" - "F**k the Security Guards" - "Come Get the P.U.S.S.Y." - "I'm Just a Human" - "Granny Says Kick Yo Black Ass" - "Wear Your Hat" - "White Cops on Dope" - "Ice Froggy Frog" Deleted Scenes (30:28) Cast Interviews - Larry B. Scott (18:25) - Mark Christopher Lawrence (17:10) - Rusty Cundieff (12:47) Cast Introduction of Feature (3:21) Theatrical Trailer 1 (2:18) Theatrical Trailer 2 (1:26) The audio commentary by Cundieff is not done in character but he speaks as himself. He delivers an excellent commentary on the genesis of the film, the making of the film, and the failure of the film. He often points out the cast and crew, also giving some interesting info on the people you can’t find on their IMDB pages, but nothing scathing. He also points out to the artists and situations they were parodying, as he knows that people watching the movie years later might not get the parodies anymore. The 10 music videos are mostly taken from a VHS looking source in non-anamorphic widescreen with video tracking errors to boot. Most of them are featured in the film itself, with some additional lines and scenes not in the feature film. “Ice Froggy Frog” is the only music video to be in 1.33:1 fullscreen and surprisingly looks the best in terms of colors, but the interlacing makes it look hard to watch. The music video for “White Cops on Dope” is an interesting curiosity, as it is a music video that mimics the “Judgment Night” soundtrack, with N.W.H. performing the song with a rock band, led by Ric Ocasek of The Cars. According to the director, he wanted the song to be in the movie, but test audiences objected to N.W.H. “selling out” and performing with a white guy. The 30 minutes of deleted scenes have mostly scene extensions and a few alternate takes but nothing to change the story or move the story drastically. The deleted scenes are presented in non-anamorphic widescreen. The 3 cast interviews are done in character. The questions by the interviewer Lilly Michael (wow, who is this beauty and where is she now?) are semi-serious while the answers are done in a silly fashion. If you want to get some insight into the film, the interviews are not helpful at all. Also curiously, the interview order is reversed from the Columbia TriStar release. On the Hen’s Tooth DVD, the Larry B. Scott interview is first, which ends with the interviewer leaving pissed off, so it really should be the last one to watch. In 1.33:1 The cast introduction has the 3 members acting in character. Although it is titled “Introduction”, it is in 3 parts: an intro to the movie, an intermission segment, and an outro to the movie. The segments play together and they are awkwardly put on the disc. The segments should obviously play before, maybe during, and after the movie, but they don’t. In 1.33:1 The two trailers are quite fun. Theatrical Trailer 1 features Rusty Cundieff as himself talking to the camera and telling the audience what the movie is about with a few clips from the movie. Theatrical Trailer 2 has a more conventional trailer with film clips and a narrator. The trailers are presented in 1.33:1, with horrendously interlaced picture. The Columbia TriStar DVD had a director’s commentary on the deleted scenes. This is the only extra not carried over. The most requested extra is the original $600 original short film of “Fear of a Black Hat” but unfortunately as Cundieff says in the commentary, is not on DVD due to rights issues.
Overall
“Fear of a Black Hat” deserves an upgrade to Blu-ray with remastered picture and sound (and with remastered extras), but until then we will have to live with a non-anamorphic DVD, sadly. (If any of the film's rightsholders are reading, yes! A high-def upgrade, please!) The commentary is great and the extras are good although the quality could be better, but we should be thankful to have any extras at all. Recommended if you want to laugh and also feel the nostalgia for early 90's hip hop, but not to show off your home theater.
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