In his six decades as a force...

In his six decades as a force against evil, a certain high-profile crime fighter has survived confrontations with the Red Blot and the Gray Fist, the Condor and the Cobra, the Vindicator, the Voodoo Master and the Silent Seven. After all that, surviving The Shadow, (KABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), the 1994 film that carries his name, shouldn’t be too difficult. Actually, there are times when this action-adventure starring Alec Baldwin as the man with the all-knowing laugh seems on its way to not only surviving but also prospering. Set largely in a mythical, dreamlike New York, it has the benefit of a gorgeous production design and eye-catching visual effects. But if ever a film made you wince whenever its actors opened their mouths, “The Shadow” is it.

True Lies (Fox Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.), James Cameron’s 1994 $100-million production, considerably ups the ante for action films with snazzy sequences: a horse and motorcycle chase through a hotel, Harrier jets hovering near skyscrapers, to name just two. It’s partly a romantic spoof of action films in general and James Bond spy-thrillers in particular, with both Cameron and star Arnold Schwarzenegger pleasantly adept at kidding the superhuman image they’ve worked so hard to build up. Despite all this, there is a strain of crudeness and mean-spirited humiliation, especially toward women, that runs through the film like a nasty virus. Schwarzenegger plays an ace operative for a clandestine government agency but is believed to be a plodding computer salesman--even by his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Calgary, 1988: A young figure skater (Moira Kelly), her partner twirling her high above his head, abruptly crashes to the ice, just 45 seconds from winning the Olympic gold. Meanwhile, a star hockey player (D.B Sweeney), is blindsided by an opponent, leaving him with a career-destroying 18-degree loss in peripheral vision in one eye. This speed-of-lightning prologue launches The Cutting Edge (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 6 p.m.), a rousing 1992 crowd-pleaser. Two years have passed, and now the figure skater is hard at work preparing for Albertville on her huge private rink when her path crosses the hockey player’s.