This 1980s Stephen King Horror Is the Hidden Gem Streaming Free on Tubi
If you've burned through the usual Stephen King hits—The Shining, Misery, Carrie—and are wondering where the weird ones are hiding, Cat's Eye just quietly crept onto Tubi. And it's worth a look.
No, it's not a lost masterpiece. But it is one of the more underappreciated King adaptations from the '80s—and for once, King actually liked it.
Released in 1985, Cat's Eye is an anthology horror movie that strings together three creepy stories with a roaming cat and a pint-sized Drew Barrymore tying them all together. Unlike the usual King-to-screen disasters of the era, this one actually works—probably because King wrote the screenplay himself.
So why haven't more people seen it? Timing.
By 1985, the market was flooded with Stephen King content, and Cat's Eye got buried. It made just over $13 million at the box office—the lowest-grossing King adaptation at that point.
Which is kind of a shame, because this one actually understood what kind of stories it was telling: short, nasty little genre tales that didn't overstay their welcome.
The film is split into three 30-minute segments:
- Quitters, Inc. – James Woods plays a chain-smoker who tries to quit with the help of a clinic that believes in electroshocking your wife and threatening your kid.
- The Ledge – A sleazy tennis pro is forced to walk around the narrow ledge of a high-rise by a vengeful crime boss. There's a pigeon. It gets ugly.
- General – Barrymore plays a kid stalked by a troll hiding in her bedroom wall. The cat finally earns its title billing by saving the day.
There's no filler here—just tight, mean stories that know exactly how long they should run. And that's the key to why Cat's Eye still holds up: it's a rare Stephen King movie that doesn't try to stretch a short story into a full-length disaster (looking at you, Graveyard Shift). Instead, it leans into the anthology format and keeps things moving.
Directed by Lewis Teague (Cujo) and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, the film features Barrymore in multiple roles and includes a brief King cameo that reminds you he was never afraid to get weird with his own work.
And he liked this one—probably because nobody tried to rewrite him.