The slight possibility that three convicts who...

The slight possibility that three convicts who vanished from Alcatraz in 1962 didn’t drown in San Francisco Bay provides the basis for the taut and dynamic 1978 Escape From Alcatraz (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.), which stars Clint Eastwood as the escapees’ ringleader and reunited him for the fifth time with director Don Siegel.

The Hard Way (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m., again Friday at 8 p.m.), a big, blowzy, hard-racing, half-bright 1991 movie, rams cliche images of Los Angeles and New York with a tongue-in-cheek vengeance as a nail-hard homicide cop (James Woods) and a winsomely cute action-movie superstar (Michael J. Fox) become symbols of their respective cities as they join forces to combat a serial killer.

The 1989 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (KCAL Sunday at 9 p.m.), one of the best in the popular horror series, has the effect of a relentless undertow, trapping its young people in a grisly terror fantasy of supernatural terror masterminded by the seemingly unconquerable Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund).

KTLA is running the first four Rockys starring Sylvestor Stallone Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m.

The 1987 Predator (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.) is an absorbing, well-made adventure-fantasy with Arnold Schwarzenegger heading a military rescue unit in the jungle of an unnamed Latin American country and coming up against an evil alien.

Blood Ties (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.), a strong 1991 action film, stars Brad Davis as an innocent American maneuvered by the Mafia into assassinating his Sicilian cousin (Tony Lo Bianco).

John Hughes’ 1986 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (KCOP Tuesday at 8 p.m.) offers a tantalizing fantasy for adults, as well as kids: What if you could fool your parents and teachers (or your boss) into thinking you were sick, earning yourself a 24-hour free ride from the boredom and responsibilities of real life? Unfortunately, Matthew Broderick, in the title role, is so smug and invincible that he doesn’t give us any chance to root for him.

The 1988 Vice Versa (KCOP Thursday at 8 p.m.), about a father (Judge Reinhold) and son (Fred Savage) who accidentally exchange minds and personalities, is one of the lesser entries in the switch cycle, mostly a collection of obvious gags, traipsing wheezily from one point to another and further weighed down by a ridiculous kidnaping subplot which seems to have been shoe-horned in merely to justify a car chase.

In the dismal 1989 Harlem Nights (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) Eddie Murphy, who also wrote and directed, eases himself into a stiff, waxy persona as a 1930s Harlem lady-killer, club host, gambler and gunman extraordinaire.