MOVIES OF THE WEEK

Although severely traumatized by his experiences in Vietnam, Air Force major Clint Eastwood in Firefox (ABC on Sunday at 8 p.m.) is recruited for an impossible mission. He must snatch the Russians’ newest, most magical Mig, which flies six times the speed of sound, is undetectable by radar and obeys the thoughts of its pilot, transmitted via electrodes in his helmet. It sounds right down Eastwood’s alley, but Firefox misfires, becoming a sagging, overlong disappointment, talky and slow to ignite. For once, Eastwood the director served Eastwood the actor badly.

You’d be wise to switch channels at 9 p.m. Sunday, when another 1982 movie, Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, makes its TV debut on NBC. It’s a delicious, absorbing melodrama, pungently acted by Paul Newman, who digs down deep to show us the painful rebirth of a decent man. He’s a Boston attorney on the skids who’s thrown a bone by his last remaining friend (Jack Warden), a case never meant for trial, involving a young woman admitted to a Catholic hospital to deliver her third child. She was given the wrong anesthetic and has lapsed into an irreversible coma. Now her relatives, no longer able to bear the burden of her care, have filed suit against the archdiocese. Just as Newman’s pulling himself together to meet the challenge--he doesn’t think the relatives should settle--a stunning woman (Charlotte Rampling) enters his life. The Verdict, which David Mamet adapted from Barry Reed’s novel, is at once the absorbing story of Newman’s redemption, a crackerjack courtroom drama (in which Newman is pitted against the suave, Establishment attorney James Mason), a suspense piece--and a stunning rendering of Boston and its distinctive atmosphere.

Based on the novel by Laura Z. Hobson, author of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Consenting Adult (ABC on Monday at 9 p.m.) stars Marlo Thomas and Martin Sheen as parents who are shocked to learn that their only son (Barry Tubb), a pre-med student, is gay. Gilbert Cates directed from John McGreevey’s script. This David Lawrence-Ray Aghayan production marks “ABC Theater’s” 50th presentation since 1972.

The late Robert Aldrich’s “The Dirty Dozen” was a brutal but exciting adventure about 12 GI convicts sent on an all-but-suicidal mission to kill a group of German officers resting at a French chateau. Now 18 years later, they’ve come up with a TV movie sequel, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (NBC on Monday at 9 p.m.). Lee Marvin is back as the renegade major who led that mission, this time leading another pack of cons to break up a plot to kill Hitler that could prolong the war. Also returning for the sequel are Ernest Borgnine and Richard Jaeckel. Among the new Dozen are Ken Wahl, Larry Wilcox and Sonny Landham.

A new version of Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckler The Corsican Brothers will air Tuesday at 9 p.m. on CBS as a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation. British actor Trevor Eve has the dual role of the twin brothers Louis and Lucien in this venerable tale about two Corsican families caught up in a vendetta. Also starring are Geraldine Chaplin, Olivia Hussey, Nicholas Clay, Jean Marsh, Benedict Taylor, Simon Ward and Donald Pleasence.

Despite a then-obligatory Hollywood ending, Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 film of The Bad Seed was pretty strong stuff, with Nancy Kelly and little Patty McCormack re-creating their stage roles as a mother distraught by her inexplicably evil daughter. Press releases suggest that the TV movie remake, airing Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC, will be truer to the drama’s original intent. Blair Brown and Carrie Wells play the mother and the daughter, and David Carradine, Lynn Redgrave, Richard Kiley and David Ogden Stiers co-star.

An example of the exploitation picture at its most creative, Jackson County Jail (Channel 5 Friday at 8 p.m.) turns back all the obligatory genre requirements--sex, violence and action--to produce a harrowing image of America, revealing a dark underside to our national psyche. Yvette Mimieux was never better as a chic, liberated L.A. ad agency executive driving across the country alone--and into big trouble in the backwoods. Tommy Lee Jones made an exciting screen debut in this 1977 production.

David Harel’s Hitler’s No. 1 Enemy: Buried Alive (Channel 28 Friday at 10 p.m.) pays eloquent tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews during World War II only to disappear in the Soviet Union, where he may possibly still be alive behind bars at 72. Fittingly, it was directed by a man saved by Wallenberg, who emerges as a savior of awesome courage who understood everything about the Germans but nothing about the Soviets who took him into custody with the fall of Budapest.

Fame (Channel 5 at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and 8 p.m. Saturday), that overcharged saga of the heartaches and joys of the kids at New York’s High School of the Performing Arts, has lots of razzle-dazzle when the students are doing their stuff but too often lapses into bathos in the non-musical stretches. Still, those young people, starting with Irene Cara, are pretty terrific.

Other good, if more familiar, entertainment: Fiddler on the Roof (Channel 5 Tuesday at 7 p.m.), Uptown Saturday Night (Channel 13 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) and Support Your Local Sheriff (Channel 13 Saturday at 6 p.m.).

On the pay/cable services in the evening: My Favorite Year (Cinemax on Sunday at 6:30), Tough Enough (Z on Sunday at 7), Terms of Endearment (ON on Sunday at 8 and Friday at 7, SelecTV on Saturday at 9), Bad Boys (SelecTV on Monday at 7, HBO on Thursday at 8), Eating Raoul (Z on Monday at 7:30), The Bride Wore Black (ON on Monday at 9), The Border (Z on Monday at 9), The Riddle of the Sands (SelecTV on Tuesday at 7), Machine Gun Kelly (WTBS on Tuesday at 9:30), Ball of Fire (Cinemax on Wednesday at 6), Hud (WGN on Thursday at 9:30), The Best Years of Our Lives (Disney on Thursday at 10), Les Grandes Manouvres (A&E; on Saturday at 6:30), The Gold Rush (Disney on Saturday at 9) and Alligator (Cinemax on Saturday at 9:30).

Opinions in this column are based on the original-release version of the films. Checks for the logs are based on Leonard Maltin’s “TV Movies” book and other sources. Pay TV movies without checks have not been reviewed by The Times.