10 Movies We Love Because They Are Always on Cable

In the era of streaming, we’ve gotten used to having everything at our fingertips. Gone are the days of rushing to your TV after dinner to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the newest episode of your favorite show, or checking the listings to see what movies are on over the long weekend and save yourself a trip to Blockbuster. Apps have made everything easier to access, which is a net good in many ways. Still, there was something fun about surfing through TV channels later at night and happening upon something you’d never seen before.

Those of us who were alive a couple decades before streaming took over watched most of our favorite movies for the first time on TV, either because we missed them in theaters or we didn’t know they existed until we randomly watched the last hour on TV and had to look up what it was we had just seen. The heyday of movies on cable corresponded with the blockbuster era of the ’80s and ’90s, and plenty of movies that didn’t do as well as they hoped in theaters got a second chance once they started playing on TV.

To wistfully celebrate a bygone era and remember why we love some of our favorite movies, we’re looking back on ten movies that we’re all especially fond of simply because we watched them on cable TV when we were younger. These movies are crowdpleasers, extremely watchable, with something for everyone. A lot of them are big action spectacles that nonetheless still play great on a home television screen, and others seem made exactly for those times when we want to relax and watch something cozy at home. They’re not all the best movies ever made, but once you stumble upon one on TV late at night, there’s nothing you can do but stay and watch until the end.