The impact of the Vietnam War on...

The impact of the Vietnam War on American lives is the theme of Michael Cimino’s 1978 The Deer Hunter (showing in two parts on KTLA Monday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday at 8 p.m.). Cimino and his writers do it justice, centering on several young men (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage and the late John Cazale) from a bleak Pennsylvania steel town. What lingers in the memory about this remarkable film--which introduced Meryl Streep--is not so much the brutal experiences the friends undergo in Vietnam as how ethnic working-class people struggle to square away their love for their country with its role in Southeast Asia.

That The Fly II (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.) isn’t called “Son of the Fly” typifies the earnestness with which this lame 1989 sequel to the 1986 smash attempts to set a serious tone. But it is “Son of the Fly” and just might have been more entertaining had its makers owned up to that.

BAT 21 (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is a standard 1988 war movie enlivened by Gene Hackman as an Air Force colonel shot down over enemy territory during the Vietnam War and by Danny Glover as the incredibly brave and courageous captain who sustains Hackman’s spirits via radio contact while plotting his rescue.

Stripes (KCOP Wednesday at 8 p.m.), a raucous, amiable 1981 send-up of today’s Army, stars Bill Murray as an out-of-shape and 30-plus ex-taxi driver with nothing better to do than to sign up with Uncle Sam.

The 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (KCOP Thursday at 8 p.m.) recaptures the spirit of the TV series as Paul Winfield and Walter Koenig scout for a dead planet as a site for a life-generating experiment when they come across Khan (Ricardo Montalban, a fine, hiss-inspiring villain), an old nemesis of Adm. Kirk (William Shatner).

As a teen comedy, the 1987 Three O’Clock High (KTLA Saturday at 6 p.m.) proves to be a pleasant surprise in which writers Richard Christian Matheson and Thomas Szollosi compose the cliches with the effortless ease of ingenious hacks and paste on a “High Noon” clock-race structure to tie it together and give it pace. This nightmare comedy is about a hapless student (Casey Siemaszko) facing after-school extinction at the hands of a newly transferred psychopath (Richard Tyson).

KCET’s Saturday night double feature: 1961’s West Side Story (at 9 p.m.) and 1951’s Royal Wedding (at 11:30 p.m.).