Fear of a Black Hat (1994) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Maybe you've wondered to yourself why This is Spinal Tap hasn't been imitated, since it was obviously a very effective format. It fact, it has been imitated, and very well, although the best clone came and went without much fanfare.

Fear of a Black Hat is almost identical to Spinal Tap in style and format, with the greatest difference in the two films being the difference between the two styles of music being lampooned. While Spinal Tap went after the white boy geek-chic of the heavy metal culture, Fear of a Black Hat zooms in on the world of rap.

It is actually a mockumentary in the guise of a student documentarian's chronicle of her life on the road with NWH (Niggaz Wit Hats), a popular gangsta group featuring Tone Def, Ice Cold, and Tas-T Taste. The group has a whole hat philosophy going for them. Imagine, if you will, pictures of America before the Civil War, and you'll conjure up images of doughy, pasty-faced white men standing around in gigantic tricorner hats, watching black men work the fields in the bright sun, hatless. The black male's current obsession with hats is a bold rejection of the hatless nature of the culture of enslavement. Or so the group contends. Their philosophy leads to an astounding collection of hats, which they wear in their private lives as well as in concerts: pirate hats, Dr. Seuss hats, sports caps, military hats, fedoras, yarmulkes, berets, you name it. A hat for every occasion.

Along the way, we see the rivalry between rap groups for the most street cred. One group outs a "gangsta" from another group with his high school pictures, revealing him to have been editor of the yearbook, and a "rich-ass, prep school, coat and tie, checkered pants wearin' mothafucka". We see two groups of rappers speak to school kids as members of RAV, "rappers against violence". They begin the lecture by showing the children a video entitled "A Gangsta's Life Ain't Fun", which shows the joyless gangstas enjoying prosperity, fancy clothes and topless women in a hot tub. They end the lecture with a gun battle between rival rap groups, while the petrified children and their teacher flee for their lives.

Anti-violent rapper Tas-T Taste has the world's largest private collection of unregistered weapons, and even owns a bazooka. His ultimate claim to street cred is that he's the only rapper who can show a bazooka wound when those other pussies are showing their wimpy knife and gunshot scars.

There is also a white rapper on the scene. Although the guy is named Vanilla Sherbet, he is nothing like Vanilla Ice, but is just about a perfect evocation of Eminem, even though ol Slim Shady was not yet in the national hip-hop scene when this movie was made.

He's not the only white guy in the film. There are record company executives trying desperately to be "def", for example, and NWH also employs white managers. Many other black people criticize them for not hiring brothers to be their managers, but since their last six managers have been shot to death, they think that hiring white men is a service to the black community.

Although Fear of a Black Hat never found an audience in its theatrical run, it is now quite a cult favorite. NWH, the mock rap group in the film, even has its own funny web site.

How did this film get ignored when it was released, then subsequently forgotten?

It's a hilarious and underrated movie, and the DVD is even more fun. Word.

Rusty Cundieff, who wrote, directed, and starred in the film, also does a full-length commentary. There are 14 deleted or expanded scenes and 12 full-length rap videos. There are outrageous interviews. There are also English-language subtitles which allow the audience to see all the words of the songs, and to follow all of the jokes even when they are delivered in heavy dialect.