In Blaze (KABC Sunday at 8:30 p.m.),...

In Blaze (KABC Sunday at 8:30 p.m.), the raucous and selectively true story of the love affair of Earl K. Long (Paul Newman), the 63-year-old governor of the state of Louisiana, and red-haired, 28-year-old burlesque queen Blaze Starr (Lolita Davidovich) has dynamite portrayals by its stars, but writer-director Ron Shelton mystifyingly pulls back, denying the 1989 film its knockout punch.

In the hands of director Danny DeVito and writer Michael Leeson the 1989 The War of the Roses (KCBS Sunday at 9 p.m.), the story of Oliver (Michael Douglas) and Barbara Rose (Kathleen Turner) is biting and vicious, a styptic pencil on the battered face of “civilized divorce.” It’s also truly crass and way over the top.

Seduction, murder, kidnaping and child abuse are some of the major elements at work in the two-part 1993 A Matter of Justice (KNBC Sunday at 9 p.m., part two Monday at 9 p.m.), but rather than tawdry soap opera it is a mostly captivating and swiftly-paced fact-based drama about a 17-year-old Marine (Jason London) vamped by a 24-year-old femme fatale (Alexandra Powers). Patty Duke plays the Marine’s determined mother.

The 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (KCBS Tuesday at 8 p.m.) follows a headlong race for the Holy Grail, the lifelong obsession of Indy’s estranged medievalist-father, portrayed by Sean Connery. Both Harrison Ford and Connery play their “I-never-told-him-I-loved-him” moments full-out and unabashedly, and they alternate them with good, acerbic, air-clearing bits of accusation and grousing. But Steven Spielberg plunges into some scenes with such a perfunctory setup that he catches his audience unprepared.

Thunderheart (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a diverting 1992 spiritual thriller directed by Michael Apted in which a predictable shoot-’em-up plot is slickly intertwined with American Indian religious customs and beliefs. Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard star.

In the 1989 Final Countdown (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) the aircraft carrier Nimitz zips across 40 years in time to intercept the Japanese war fleet en route to Pearl Harbor. Curiously, the special effects are the weakest part of this 1980 release, but it gets by on the cleverness of its story, directed in straightforward fashion by Don Taylor. Kirk Douglas is the skipper, and others involved include Martin Sheen, Charles Durning and Katharine Ross. The film’ s real amusement comes in seeing how its preposterous premise is worked out.

The 1989 Lock Up (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) is yet another Sylvester Stallone macho fantasy in which he plays a convict of superhuman endurance in the face of Donald Sutherland’s crazy, ultra-sadistic, credibility-defying warden.

The 1992 Blame It on the Bellboy (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) is a dated, mildly amusing comedy of errors. set in a posh Venice hotel and benefiting from a largely British cast headed by Dudley Moore.

Saturday night brings the epic 1973 How the West Was Won (KNBC at 8 p.m.) and a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry double bill on KCOP, Magnum Force (at 6 p.m.) and Dirty Harry (at 8 p.m.).