The 1980s brought us some of the best movies in pop culture history. Ghostbusters, Aliens and The Terminator are just a few titles from a long list of exceptional cinema.
This February, Watch With Us takes a look back at three ’80s movies that you should run back a second time on streamers like Prime Video and Tubi, and we ranked them.
For this list, we run the genre gamut: we’ve got horror, comedy and a scintillating erotic thriller.
At the top of our list is Hellraiser, that classic horror movie that spawned a franchise.
British hedonist Frank (Sean Chapman) gets his hands on a mysterious puzzle box while traveling abroad, and when he opens it, he unleashes a portal to Hell that brings him the perfect synthesis of pleasure and pain. Unfortunately, to achieve this, his body is literally torn apart by a group of leather-clad demons. When Frank’s brother, Larry (Andrew Robinson), and his wife, Julia (Clare Higgins), move into Frank’s old house, they inadvertently bring Frank’s remnants back to life. Julia — Frank’s former lover — quickly becomes his servant, bringing Frank exactly what he needs to become whole again: human blood.
Before Butterball was relegated to delivering Uber Eats orders, he was one of the terrifying Cenobites in this cult classic horror from 1987. Though reaction was initially divided due to the admittedly extreme nature of the film, Hellraiser went on to become a franchise with nine sequels and a straight-to-streaming movie on Hulu in 2022. Hellraiser feels shocking to watch even in 2026 — the lurid practical effects, over-the-top performances and true thematic ambitiousness have allowed it to endure and feel fresh.
During the Great Depression, waitress Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is unhappily married to her brutish, neglectful husband Monk (Danny Aiello), who blows what little money she makes on booze and gambling. To escape the misery of her life, Cecilia seeks refuge in the movies. But when she becomes obsessed with the new film The Purple Rose of Cairo, she rewatches it enough times that her transfixion causes the lead character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), to emerge from the screen. Initially overjoyed at fiction and reality merging, Cecilia eventually realizes that the two were never meant to mix in such a way, and she has to get Tom back into his movie world.
Funny, sweet and inventive in equal measure, The Purple Rose of Cairo is a loving testament to the emotional power of movies and a compelling take on the line between reality and fiction. Everyone in the cast is superb, but Daniels shines in his breakout performance, and the chemistry between him and Farrow is warm and captivating. At a breezy and scant 84 minutes, The Purple Rose of Cairo manages not to waste a single minute of its time.
Electronics store owner Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) moonlights taking surveillance jobs, and he’s hired by a businessman to spy on a fashion designer whom he suspects is committing white-collar crimes. However, Bobby’s investigation into Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner) reveals her dabbling in something a bit more salacious — spending her nights as a fetish sex worker named China Blue. Bobby can’t help but be intrigued by Joanna, but his pursuit of her in a sexual and then romantic manner is complicated by one of Joanna’s particularly disturbed clients: a sexually deviant priest (Anthony Perkins) who has taken to stalking her.
Crimes of Passion still divides audiences to this day, although its reputation has grown in more recent years, with more and more regarding it as a classic of the erotic thriller genre. The film stands out with its distinct, expressive cinematography, colorful lighting and production design, plus the melodramatic score and Laughlin, Turner and Perkins positively chewing the scenery. If you enjoy provocative works of art that are daring, surreal and uncompromising in their exploration of human sexuality, try Crimes of Passion on for size.
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