Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan...

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (ABC Sunday at 8 p.m.) once again propels us into the 23rd Century, but the ride is much smoother than it was in “Star Trek--The Motion Picture.” This time there’s no feeling that its makers are straining to compete with “Star Wars” and other special-effects spectaculars; instead, they’re attempting to recapture the spirit of the beloved TV series. This time out Paul Winfield and Walter Koenig are scouting for a dead planet as a site for a life-generating experiment when they come across Khan (Ricardo Montalban, a fine, hiss-inspiring villain), a long-banished nemesis of Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) of the Starship USS Enterprise.

Sunday through Tuesday’s 9-11 p.m. slots on NBC will be filled by Evergreen, a saga of a beautiful Jewish girl’s rise from maid to rich matriarch in turn-of-the-century America. Lesley Ann Warren (on the cover) stars.

Channel 5’s daily 8 p.m. movies are so well selected that it’s perplexing that it would air a piece of sick trash like A Stranger Is Watching (Monday and again, alas, on Saturday), an exercise in extreme violence against women, featuring a child witnessing her mother stabbed to death and a woman being stabbed by a screwdriver. (There is a crude balance, however: A man is savagely mugged, a man throws a knife into the chest of another man and a woman rams a pipe through a man’s neck.) Sad to say, Rip Torn stars as a killer who kidnaps and imprisons the 8-year-old daughter of one of his victims beneath Grand Central Station.

On a more encouraging note, Gloria Steinem’s famous 1963 expose of Playboy Bunnydom has become a TV movie, A Bunny’s Tale (ABC Monday at 9 p.m.), starring Kirstie Alley as Steinem.

Lots of good people, starting with director Robert Benton and Meryl Streep, came a cropper in a Hitchcock homage so icy--not to mention tedious and contrived--that it would have been more aptly titled “Chill of the Night” instead of Still of the Night (CBS Wednesday at 9 p.m.). Roy Scheider is a Manhattan psychiatrist drawn to the mistress (Streep) of a recently murdered ex-patient. (For consolation, try Michael Schultz’s rambunctious Car Wash, which screens at 8 that night on Channel 5.)

How sad it is that only the most loyal fans of the late John Belushi (and Dan Aykroyd) need bother with Neighbors (ABC Thursday at 8 p.m.), and even they may not be able to take this 94-minute exercise in humiliation being passed off as a comedy. Belushi and Kathryn Walker are a sedate suburban couple whose quiet, even dull, existence is wrecked by gaudy, loud and obnoxious new neighbors Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty, who waste no time in turning Belushi and Walker’s lives into pure hell. It’s yet another satire on the supposed horrors of suburbia and American family life, but it is too inept and too nasty simply for nastiness’ sake to have earned the right to criticize anything, even with purported humor. Since it values nothing, it ends up worthless itself.

The wonderful Wizard of Oz is back Friday on CBS at 8 p.m., and Godfrey Reggio’s dazzling, hypnotic, one-of-a-kind Koyaanisqatsi airs Friday at 8 p.m. on Channel 24 and 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15. It takes its title from a Hopi Indian word meaning, among other things, life out of balance, and in an astonishing symphony of sound--Philip Glass did the score--and image, presents a view of America as a dream turning into a nightmare.

Once again John Huston’s robust telling of Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, turns up, Saturday at 10 p.m. on Channel 9.

Channel 28 Saturday at 10 p.m. presents Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s razzle-dazzle sendup of thrillers, with spiky humor and a splash of the romantic thrown in for good measure. High-spirited and outrageous, it’s the kind of film only a first-time director would dare to make. Much style--and much fun.

Selected evening fare on the pay/cable services: Finnegan Begin Again (HBO Sunday at 8), Puberty Blues (SelecTV Monday at 9), Stay Hungry (Movie Channel Tuesday at 8), Desiree (WGN Tuesday at 9:30), Scarlet Street (Z Thursday at 7), Fitzcarraldo (Movie Channel Thursday at 8), Betrayal (HBO Thursday at 10), Splash (Friday: Movie Channel at 6, HBO at 8, Z at 9; Saturday: Z at 7, Cinemax at 9), The Little Foxes (Cinemax Friday at 8), Ball of Fire (Movie Channel Saturday at 7), California Split (WGN Saturday at 8:30).

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.