Sixteen Candles (Channel 13 Sunday at 6...

Sixteen Candles (Channel 13 Sunday at 6 p.m.) is an uneasy mix of the sympathetic and the synthetic, the raucous and the racist--pity poor Gedde Watanabe, cast as a sex-starved Chinese exchange student. It also asks us to believe that an entire family would forget Molly Ringwald’s 16th birthday.

With Red Dawn (Channel 5 Sunday at 8 p.m.) John Milius convinces us that a full-scale Soviet invasion could happen here, only to settle for making a cheap rabble-rouser. Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen play high school resisters to Red rule.

Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) finds Stacy Keach’s Hammer kidnaped, drugged and parachuted into the Nevada desert outside Las Vegas--and that’s just the beginning.

Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), another new TV movie, tells of the baby rescued from an abandoned well in Texas in 1987. Roxana Zal and Will Oldham play her young parents.

Footloose (Channel 13 Monday at 8 p.m.) is not particularly inventive, but it does have two jaw-dropping musical turns and Kevin Bacon in an electrifying star turn as a Chicago hipster who clashes with small-town pastor John Lithgow.

I Know My First Name Is Steven (NBC Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m.) is a new four-hour, two-part TV movie about the boy who was kidnaped in Northern California at age 7 and who escaped at 14. Steven is played by Luke Edwards and Corin (Corky) Nemec; Arliss Howard plays his kidnaper.

In Weird Science (Channel 5 Tuesday at 8 p.m.), another John Hughes illustrated teen-age daydream, Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith conjure up a computer-built dream woman, played by Kelly Le Brock--to her credit--as if she were real.

Revenge of the Nerds (Channel 11 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a delicious, gratifying underdog fantasy starring Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards.

Arthur (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is that sparkling 1981 screwball comedy with Dudley Moore, John Gielgud and Liza Minnelli; you may have problems with the fact that Moore’s millionaire is inarguably an alcoholic.

Of Channel 5’s week of youth flicks, the winner is Martha Coolidge’s Valley Girl (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.), starring Nicolas Cage as working-class Hollywood High Romeo and Deborah Foreman in the title role.

Meatballs (Channel 11 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is a pleasantly raunchy summer camp comedy with Bill Murray.

Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line (Channel 28 Wednesday at 9 p.m.) is one film that uncontestably has made a difference. On the one hand, it’s a demanding experiment in which an ultra-cool neo- film noir style is brought to bear on the documentary form--and most likely why it wasn’t Oscar-nominated--and on the other, a brief for a miscarriage of justice so persuasive that it succeeded in getting Randall Dale Adams sprung from a Texas prison after serving 12 years for a murder he always claimed he never committed.

The Revenge of the Stepford Wives (Channel 5 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a TV movie in every way superior to its big-screen original, a horror fable which imagines the worst possible backlash to women’s liberation on the part of the beleaguered American male.

Bustin’ Loose (Channel 13 Friday at 8 p.m.) finds paroled convict Richard Pryor obliged to drive teacher Cicely Tyson’s eight emotionally disturbed kids cross-country; this 1981 comedy is uneven but ingratiating.

Tom Selleck is perfectly cast as a World War I flying ace caught up in an adventure-filled 1920 race against the clock from Istanbul to Afghanistan in High Road to China (CBS Friday at 9 p.m.). Bess Armstrong is equally well cast as Selleck’s beautiful, resourceful leading lady.

Too bad Zorro, the Gay Blade (Channel 9 Saturday at 8 p.m.) isn’t as funny as George Hamilton is in his dual role as the foppish son of the legendary Zorro and his gay twin brother.

Gallipoli (Channel 13 Saturday at 10 p.m.), director Peter Weir and writer David Williamson’s sweeping, splendid World War I saga, stars Mark Lee and Mel Gibson as two young soldiers whose loss of innocence in battle represents Australia’s own loss of innocence.

The ratings checks on movies in the TV log are provided by the Tribune TV Log listings service.