The forgotten: Horror/sci-fi classics you may have missed

The Short List

Horror- Bruce Campbell – Assault on Dome 4 (1) – Courtesy of Avatar Filmworks, The Sci-Fi Channel

5. Assault on Dome 4 (1997)

Fresh off of a New Year’s Eve watching Hans Gruber drop from the Nakatomi building (Happy 2019), I decided to dig up an old VHS recording of this Sci-Fi Channel production. Please notice that in 1997, the network spelled its name correctly.

Believe it or not, I do have a VCR so I dusted it off and popped this Bruce Campbell film in. At the time, critics likened this effort to “Die Hard” in space. While I understand the comparison, lead actor Joseph Culp is no Bruce Willis.

Then again, Bruce Campbell isn’t Alan Rickman but you know what, that is okay. I still enjoy the hell out of this flick. And that is not meant to cast shade on Campbell’s ability at all.

What it does mean, is in the hands of a less seasoned actor, his character of Alex Windham could have been a mere copy of Rickman’s legendary performance. Instead, Bruce makes this one his own.

That is why this B movie is inherently enjoyable. Campbell plays a rather cocky terrorist who escapes a penal planet where he is incarcerated and ends up taking over a scientific outpost known as Dome 4 so that he can create weapons of mass destruction to obliterate his enemies.

However, one of the scientists just happens to be the wife of a well-known lawman (Culp). Now, the two men try to outwit one another in a game of high stakes that could end up being fatal. But I will give no spoilers away.

This is classic Bruce and you wouldn’t want him any other way.