. . . the visually impaired throughout this brief cartoon, THREE BLIND MOUSEKETEERS. One-eyed "Captain Cat" fancies himself to be some sort of Pirate King in the Land of the Blind, Lording it over a trio of totally sightless rodents. However, Disney portrays this White Cane Crowd as devious kleptomaniacs, swift to scarf up anything of value that's not nailed down. As the Front Line of Household Defense, Captain Cat proves to be an ineffectual malingerer, sleeping on the job. (Though the Homeowner is not shown in this fairly uninspired rendering of an ancient feud often done far better by Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes with Sylvester Cat versus Speedy Gonzalez, one can assume that this feckless feline soon will be fed to the dogs). Captain Cat is anthropomorphic enough to cry out for a peg leg (along the lines of L.J. Silver), but lacks the charisma of even Jim Hawkin's salt pork barrel hideout. Disney appears to be informing viewers that having a fly in your soup is better than being forced to down a full serving of its Crape De Mousse. Who could argue with that?

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.

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.

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.