Blake Edwards’ Sunset (KTLA Sunday at 6...

Blake Edwards’ Sunset (KTLA Sunday at 6 p.m.) sounded so promising--and so amusing. In the late 1920s, cowboy Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) joins forces with none other than frontier Marshal Wyatt Earp (James Garner) to solve a Hollywood crime. Unfortunately, a glum script and a lackluster Willis do in this 1988 film, whose only bright spot is a sparkling portrayal by Garner.

Gary Cooper is the star of William Wyler’s 1940 The Westerner (KTLA Sunday at 8 p.m., AMC Tuesday at midnight), a sage of land wars, but the film’s unforgettable presence is Walter Brennan, who won his third Oscar as the ornery, colorful Judge Roy Bean.

Randa Haines’ graceful, acutely authentic 1986 Children of a Lesser God (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.), based on Mark Medoff’s play, is a classic love story--romantic, passionate and involving vibrant characters. What makes it different is that the woman (Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar) has been deaf all her life. William Hurt also stars.

Foul Play (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a broadly amusing 1978, occasionally merely crass comedy-thriller starring Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase and Dudley Moore.

The notion behind the 1988 Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.) seems to have been to introduce TV’s erstwhile horror-picture hostess to the big screen in a movie as rotten as the worst flick she ever introduced on the tube. It’s a shame because Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) is a dynamite personality.

The 1990 TV movie The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story (KCOP Wednesday at 8 p.m., again on Saturday at 4 a.m.) doesn’t attribute where its “new” information comes from but does deliver 90 minutes of tingles and tautness in a finger-pointing version of events leading up to the explosion of the Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Ned Beatty stars.

In terms of simple, flat-out, roof-rattling fright, Steven Spielberg’s 1982 Poltergeist (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) gives full value, but it’s a case of a very slight credibility-defying story weighed down by lavish special effects. Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are an attractive, likable couple who move into a nice tract house with their kids only to be confronted with awesome supernatural horrors.

Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (KTLA Saturday at 6 p.m.) has every virtue, including unexpectedness. The 1981 film, which revolves around the time travel of a bright, endearing 11-year-old (Craig Warnock), fairly bristles with wit, invention, a wry intelligence and a conjurer’s chest of dazzling effects.