Barking Dogs

The network news crew flying out from Los Angeles to cover a forest fire in Idaho believe themselves entitled to danger pay. The blaze has already completely destroyed a rural religious community and all its inhabitants and is still raging, but that's not the reason they feel at risk. The danger is from their onscreen reporter, beautiful, sexy, and malignantly ambitious Vicki Garcia. When Vicki turns her wiles on a man who has something she wants—whether an extra minute on camera or a helicopter ride to the off-limits scene of the tragedy—she gets it. Sometimes it provides great coverage; it can also get one or more of her victims incarcerated, incapacitated, or incinerated. Particularly at peril is the crew's smitten field producer, Kevin Manwaring, whom Vicki keeps on edge with unspoken—and unkept—promises of delights to come. The land occupied by the gentle people who perished in the conflagration is coveted by a mining company, and when the TV technicians discover a severely wounded dog with a bullet in its chest, they begin to wonder about the true origin of the fire. This rare and authentic look at the people of TV news at work on location makes a gripping thriller and provides a humorous but hard look at some driven characters in the manic world of network television.