N***** With Hats

January 12, 2009 10:51 AM

Is the movie Fear of A Black Hat normally censored?

I watched the movie over streaming Netflix the other day, and noticed that it is HEAVILY censored, using cartoon noises to bleep out the words and cartoon hats to block their mouths and other objectionable material. The censoring was clearly a big joke, but it was so prevalent that I wonder if the movie was originally censored. Did I happen to watch a version that had been censored for TV or something, or was the movie always censored like this?

posted by shmegegge to media & arts (4 comments total)

No. I watched the uncensored version many years ago in college. For some reason Netflix is streaming a censored version. I noticed this too when I began to watch it on my 360 a few weeks ago.
posted by gnutron at 11:24 AM on January 12

This Netflix Community discussions mentions it too.
posted by JaredSeth at 11:26 AM on January 12

Fear of a Black Hat is one of the movies that was digitized for Netflix as part of their partnership with Starz. In my experience, those tend to be full screen (ugh!) rather than wide screen versions and they're often edited to "basic cable" specifications. There are plenty of reviews on the Netflix page for the film (link will only work for Netflix subscribers, I think) that note the problem with the streaming version as compared to the DVD.
posted by bcwinters at 11:45 AM on January 12

thanks, guys, that explains it. I'd noticed the Starz Fullscreen thing before (and, yes, ugh) but hadn't noticed any undue censoring before this. really bizarre.
posted by shmegegge at 11:52 AM on January 12