The 1985 American Flyers (KCOP Sunday at...

The 1985 American Flyers (KCOP Sunday at 6 p.m.), which tells of two brothers competing in a bicycle marathon, is not nearly as good as writer Steve Tesich’s earlier effort, “Breaking Away,” but does present a Kevin Costner clearly headed for stardom.

There’s terrific inventiveness in Back to the Future, Part II (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) the 1989 sequel. It seems there’s big trouble ahead in 2015 for Michael J. Fox’s son (played by Fox), so he and Christopher Lloyd’s Dr. Emmett Brown take off in the doc’s magic DeLorean to see if they can change future history.

On the surface the 1990 Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.), a bloodier version of the horror anthology TV series, but its three episodes treat us, sometimes cleverly, to an eerie mating of Gothic sadism and contemporary upscale morality as it reveals the greed, lies, villainy and killing rage lying just below the surface of modern life.

As a nice West L.A. kid named Les, Corey Haim is likable in License to Drive (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.). The 1986 comedy hooks you faster than a car cutting in front of you on the freeway as it whisks you back to that awful period in your teens when you’re finishing up driver’s education but still haven’t quite got your license yet.

Firewalker (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a breezy, big-scale 1986 comedy-adventure that takes scruffy soldiers-of-fortune Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett on a lively pursuit of Aztec treasure. It also takes Norris out of his usual ultra-violent martial-arts fare and into “Raiders of the Lost Ark” territory.

The more typical Norris is on view in the 1984 Missing in Action (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.) and in its two sequels, the 1985 Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) and the 1988 Braddock: Missing in Action III (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.). The first is a solid action-adventure in which Norris is an ex-Vietnam POW sent to Vietnam to rescue American soldiers still held there. The sequels, however, go from bad to worse.

The 1989 A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (KCAL Saturday at 9 p.m.) has the effect of a relentless undertow, trapping its young people in a grisly fantasy of supernatural terror masterminded by the unconquerable Freddy Krueger; a tightly integrated struggle between good and evil that’s one of the best in the series.