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Skip's picks
From bees to trees to venereal disease, how does one go about picking the best of the education films of the past decades? Professional A/V Geek Skip Elsheimer gives his top ten picks:
1) Squeak the Squirrel-The film is supposed to demonstrate how animals learn, but quickly becomes an allegory championing the proletariat.
2) Pamela Wong's Birthday for Grandma-A story about a young Chinese-American girl who is gathering things for her Chinese grandmother's birthday party. The ending usually has the whole audience screaming....
3) Down and Out-This is a work-safety film about the dangers of falling. In the course of the film, the main character falls about a hundred times, making this film as funny as most Three Stooges shorts.
4) Social Acceptability-This film explains cliques and all the social politicking that takes place in high school. The moral of the story is that you're only as popular as your parents.
5) VD Attack Plan-An animated Disney film about venereal disease-surprisingly entertaining and very factual. And no, none of the Disney characters star in this film.
6) White Wilderness: Lemmings-A Disney True Life Adventure film with dramatic footage of lemmings committing suicide. Since lemmings mass suicide is a myth, how do you think Disney got all this footage...?
7) Soapy the Germ Fighter-Billy is a little boy who thinks that washing up after playing cowboy makes him a sissy. A giant, talking, cowboy-cake of soap convinces him otherwise.
8) Sudden Birth-This film, made for police officers, gives the basics on how to deliver a baby. The acting is so terrible that when a woman actually does give birth, the audience is bewildered over what they just saw.
9) Wheels of Tragedy-One of those classic Ohio Highway Patrol driver's education films, designed to disgust and scare people into driving safely. Real car crashes and gore punctuate little badly acted dramatizations of poor driving habits.
10) Winged Scourge-An animated Disney film about malaria and how to stomp it out. The Seven Dwarves drain wetlands and spray pesticide to deal with the mosquitoes.