Death Wish in Adidas: Tougher Than Leather Screens at Re-Bar Tonight

With so many local theaters screening every whiff of an ’80s movie (replete with Sing-Alongs, Quote-Alongs, and Every-Damned-Other-Thing-a-Longs), you’d think every Reagan Era cinema oddity would’ve been unearthed for millennial consumption by now. Happily, the Re-Bar‘s got evidence to the contrary on display with tonight’s free Forgotten Film Night presentation(doors open at 9 p.m., films start at 10:30 p.m.).

Tougher than Leather hit theaters in 1988, an anomalous combo of blaxploitation grit and hip-hop attitude dropped amidst a decade too shiny and facile to give a rat’s ass (the movie tanked pretty soundly on arrival back in the day). Rap gods Run DMC play, um, a rap crew out to avenge a friend slain by a seedy booking agent/drug runner (the crew’s real-life production wiz Rick Rubin, who also co-wrote and directed, plays said sleazeball). Much violence, exploitation, and rhyming ensues.

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The movie’s never been released on DVD, and it’s acquired a reputation just slightly more favorable than a pail of dirty diapers over the years (Richard Harrington’s Washington Post review pretty much sums up the prevailing view of the time). But the soundtrack sports some of Run DMC’s best, most underrated jams; the Beastie Boys surface just two years before revolutionizing the genre with Paul’s Boutique; and, well, the movie’s reputedly politically incorrect and offensive as hell. If that doesn’t read like a ringing endorsement, you’ve blundered onto the wrong SunBreak contributor’s huzzahs by mistake, Bucky.

The Re-Bar will back Tougher than Leather with a more benign relic of the era, the 1985 hiphop-sploitation curio Krush Groove, which busts out both of the above crews, the Fat Boys, LL Cool J, and Sheila E (all shown to great effect in the musical numbers). Thrills–and phat beats–don’t come any cheaper than this on a Friday night.