Animal Cunning. In which various kinds of wild animals are tormented and abused for our amusement. If they’re not feeding cigarettes to deer, the filmmakers are poking lizards with sticks, pulling sloths from trees, and forcing a vulture and a puma, respectively, to fight an iguana. And then there’s the narration! It’s fun to make fun of animals, kids! This film is only “educational” in the loosest sense; it looks like it was made as a theatrical short, though it looks like the New York Board of Education distributed it, probably to schools. It’s not quite as upsetting as some of the worst of this genre (Catching Trouble, anyone?), and animals are always fun to watch, but I’m glad we seemed to have grown out of thinking this sort of thing is entertainment (if we haven’t, I don’t want to know about it.) Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ***. Overall Rating: ***.