Ron Howard’s 1982 comedy Night Shift (Channel...

Ron Howard’s 1982 comedy Night Shift (Channel 13 today at 1) has seemingly unsavory subject matter--a city morgue turned into a bordello--but not only does much of this Henry Winkler vehicle click, it also introduced sleaze Michael Keaton, nymph Shelley Long and the song “That’s What Friends Are For.” There’s even a bit player in it named Kevin Costner.

The Killing Fields (Channel 13 tonight at 8) is director Roland Joffe’s riveting 1984 re-creation of the Cambodian war and its genocidal aftermath, shot by cinematographer Chris Menges in a style of scalding immediacy, with Sam Waterston as New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg and Dr. Haing S. Ngor as the friend, Dith Pran, whom he had to leave behind in hell.

In the 1979 slob-at-summer-camp comedy Meatballs (Channel 11 Monday at 8 p.m.), with Bill Murray in a role that seems tailor-made for his late co-star John Belushi, director Ivan Reitman amused a lot of people who probably should have known better.

Barry Levinson’s 1984 The Natural (Channel 11 Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.) messes up Bernard Malamud’s Faustian baseball fantasy with a silly upbeat ending--despite a cast that includes Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Robert Duvall and Barbara Hershey.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Channel 13 Thursday at 8 p.m.) is the most epic and lavish of the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood trilogy, a great 1967 horse opera, with Eastwood’s scruffy, cheroot-chewing mercenary in a three-cornered treasure search, backdropped by the Civil War. His “Good” is amusingly relative; Lee Van Cleef plays pure “Evil” and Eli Wallach is corruptible “Ugly” humanity.

A Fistful of Dollars (Channel 13 Friday at 8 p.m.), shot in Italy and based on Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” (with a mercenary for hire destroying his warring employers in a corrupt town), improbably became a huge worldwide hit and the progenitor of an entire sub-genre: the spaghetti Western. The director is Leone, the star Eastwood, the head villain Gian Maria Volonte, and the hypnotic music, as always, by Ennio Morricone. The combination still sizzles.

The bizarre, semi-autobiographical 1984 rock musical Purple Rain (Channel 13 Saturday at 6 p.m.), directed by Albert Magnoli, has Prince playing (almost) himself in what seems an MTV hybrid of “A Star Is Born,” “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Rebel Without a Cause”: tortured family tangles jangle against show-biz hipsterism and sex. Prince’s fiery music and onstage act and Morris Day’s clowning, as an egomaniacal funk rival, make it an entertaining show.

The 1976 King Kong (Channel 13 Saturday at 8 p.m.), directed by John Guillermin, is nowhere near the 1933 original, despite producer Dino De Laurentiis’ lavish claims--though stars Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and Jessica Lange (as the blonde in the paw) give it better acting .

Director Buzz Kulik’s touching 1970 Brian’s Song (Channel 9 Saturday at 8 p.m.) is based on the real-life bond between Chicago Bear teammates Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, movingly played by Billy Dee Williams and James Caan.

Even fans of the original TV show may well be stupefied by 1990’s The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage (CBS Saturday at 9 p.m.), in which a cretinous crime wave hits the ship.