Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 28, 1993 TAG: 9310280053
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
What's this? More smutty sweeps programming? Relax.
The fanged femme fatale is, however, sometimes literally fatal: It's a black widow spider, subject of one of four reports that make up "Nature's Nightmares," this week's special Halloween installment of "National Geographic Explorer." It airs Sunday night on TBS, the cable superstation.
Other scary topics covered on the two-hour show include lightning, and getting struck thereby, plus two repeat segments, one on a Hollywood bug trainer and the other on bats. Robert Urich, as usual, is the able host.
Every Sunday night, about 2.5 million viewers in 1.7 million American homes eschew the major network fare for "Explorer," which is always watchable and sometimes fascinating. An "Explorer" report last year on the octopus was one of the best TV nature shows in recent memory.
It made the octopus lovable, which certainly isn't easy.
There's no way to make black widow spiders lovable, and the show doesn't try. A single bite from one of these hot-tempered little snots can send a person into 48 hours of terrible pain, or even death. One victim recalls, "It feels like you've got yourself in a vice and someone is twisting it tighter and tighter and tighter, attempting to break all the bones in your body."
Close-up photography of the spiders is amazing, and after the report is over, there's a four-minute profile of George and Kathy Dodge, the husband-wife team that took the pictures. George went beyond the call of duty, lying down and letting a black widow crawl on his stomach to re-enact an attack on a man bitten in his sleep.
The second piece, on lightning, is frightening in a different way. Lightning strikes the Earth a hundred times a second, we learn, and of the 1,000 Americans zapped by it each year, 300 die.
Easily the most intriguing part of this segment is a visit to a convention of lightning and electric shock survivors. A man recalls the pain of losing his twin brother while both were out playing golf. A man thrown 48 feet by the bolt that struck him says that ever since, he has been almost immune to pain, even when one of his fingers was cut off by a snowblower.
And another man who was blind for nine years says his eyesight was suddenly restored when a bolt hit him. "That guy upstairs does crazy things," the man observes. The existence of lightning makes it easier to believe in God.
Of the two repeat segments, the one on Hollywood bug expert Steve Kutcher is dated, because much of it was shot on the set of "Arachnophobia," a 1990 movie about spiders invading a small California town. Still, it's impressive to see Kutcher coaching the creatures or to hear director Frank Marshall bark orders like, "OK, motivate the spider."
Parents of small kids should be warned that this segment includes two horrific shots from other Hollywood movies demonstrating the bug trainer's handiwork: a man's torso erupting in maggots from "Fright Night 2" and a body being consumed by beetles in "Prince of Darkness."
Finally come the bats, "Phantoms of the Night," as the program calls them, which may be ugly and unsavory but do help control the bug population. Footage of vampire bats feeding on the hoof and ear of a mule is included. Yuck. "Here," says the narrator, "myth catches up to reality."
As usual, local TV stations will be flooding the airwaves with horror movies for Halloween viewing. Most will have been edited for TV, but some R-rated material may remain. The National Geographic special offers material that's unnerving but not disgusting.
The only disappointment is the hysterical tone of the teaser announcements that open the show: "What you can only imagine, nature supplies in terrifying reality!" And, "See how this tiny terror can trap a human body in a web of suffering!" This sounds less National Geographic than National Enquirer.
Otherwise, "Nature's Nightmares" is top-flight fright fare. You're bound to learn something, but in about the least painful way possible.
Washington Post Writers Group
\ AUTHOR Tom Shales is TV editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post.
by CNB