Die drei blinden Mausketiere

Not surprisingly, "Three Blind Mouseketeers" finds three blind mice dressed up like Musketeers. Now this begs the question 'Who would want blind musketeers in the first place?!' as well as 'What qualifications did these mice think they needed to be expert swordsmen?!'. Perhaps they'd listened to a few Zatoichi films--all I know is that the premise is bizarre to say the least.

Eventually, a nasty cat arrives and plans on eating the Mouseketeers. Now this SHOULD have been incredibly easy. Yet, somehow, these little guys manage to outsmart the cat--mostly because the cat is an idiot. After all, blind rodents shouldn't pose much of a challenge.

Like any Disney short of this era, the animation is superb. The story is decent but not a lot more. Worth seeing but certainly not among Disney's best at the time.

If you've seen any random Tom and Jerry short then you've already seen everything that Three Blind Mouseketeers has to offer. The titular trio invade cabin or pantry of sorts patrolled by Captain Katt (who looks a lot like a beagle boy) that has laid a series of traps for said mice to blindly (pun intended) walk into. However chance is on their side and they bumble harmlessly through the room, much to the irritation of the cat.

Forgettable mayhem ensues, which inevitably leads to Katt stumbling through his own traps and hurting himself. Once this cartoon is over I doubt you'll ever think about it again.

A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.

The THREE BLIND MOUSEKETEERS set about getting their cheesy meal, despite the best efforts of villainous Captain Katt to destroy them.

An enjoyable, though unremarkable, spoof of swashbuckling movies. Disney would revive the term `Mouseketeer' two decades later for use in the Mickey Mouse Club TV show. Katt seems to owe a lot to the personality of character actor Noah Beery; and is that Walt vocalizing the skinny mouse?

The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.

THE THREE MOUSKETEERS gives a cartoon spin to the Alexander Dumas tale of "all for one" as they have to use their combative skills with sword and derring-do to defeat a fat cat bent on their destruction. "My traps are set in every room, those cats are munchin' to their doom." Predictably, the mousketeers outmaneuver the traps either by remarkable luck or skill (or both) and the sleeping cat (who dreams about victory) is soon awakened by the rather boisterous musketeers as they congratulate each other on escaping his booby traps.

The rest of the cartoon is strictly a series of cat-and-mouse chases with the mice winning at every turn. The scene where one of them is hiding under a teacup is reminiscent of the later gag used for Lucifer in Disney's full-length "Cinderella".

Nothing really extraordinary here, although it's clear to see that the animation techniques were undergoing vast improvement by 1936.

Three Blind Mouseketeers (1936)

*** (out of 4)

The title characters - three blind mice - are hated by a large cat who plans to capture them no matter what it takes. The cat comes up with some very clever traps but will the mice be able to avoid them while at the same time taking the cheese? The traps used in this Disney short were decades ahead of the SAW series that's for certain. With that said, this here is certainly an entertaining short but I think it falls well short of being a classic. Still, there is some great stuff here including the music score, which really pumps you up as you watch the film. Another major plus are the four characters as the three mice are certainly likable and the cat is such a good villain that you love to hate him. I think the first portion of the short works best as we see the mice trying to steal the cheese.