Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Monster Bug Wars'

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Monster Bug Wars”

It’s got huge, tentacled, multi-legged, pincher-jawed, creepy-crawly creatures. It’s got gore, violence and battles to the death. It’s got thrills and arcane science anomalies. But it isn’t the latest sci-fi adventure or bloody horror movie to invade the multiplex. It’s the super-up-close nature documentary series “Monster Bug Wars,” due out on DVD Tuesday.

This five-episode Science Channel series originated in Australia, where film crews and CGI artists teamed up to create scenarios that show nature’s smallest creatures engaged in epic, bug-eat-bug battles. As real-life armies of spiders, scorpions, centipedes, wasps and killer ants unleashed arsenals of stings, spikes, bites and lethal venom upon one another, filmmakers employing ultra-magnifying, high-definition video equipment have recorded the battles.

The result is an entertaining and fascinating mash-up of gory, gladiatorial spectacles and witty, informative science lectures – conducted by a pair of amiable, intrepid hosts, Cornell University’s renowned entomologist, Linda Rayor, and Bryan Grieg Fry, a.k.a. “Professor Poison,” from the University of Queensland.