The Three Robbers 1972

Narrator Gene Deitch guides us through a vivid, morally layered adventure about three infamous highwaymen: Dominik, Felix, and Maximus. Each brother wields a signature tool that marks their raids: Dominik with a rattling blunderbuss to intimidate coachmen and passengers, Felix with a pepper-blower that disorients and blinds the carriage horses, and Maximus with a red battle axe that vandalizes carriage wheels. Their exploits spin a legend along the road, mixing danger with a certain rough charisma that few can resist.

One day they intercept a carriage carrying a lonely girl named Tiffany, whose parents have died and who is being sent to live with a wicked aunt who runs an orphanage. Not wanting that life, Tiffany cunningly claims to be the daughter of a maharaja, and the robbers take her to their hidden lair. While among them, Tiffany ponders what to do with the wealth they’ve amassed and, in a surprising turn, teaches the trio to read and write so they can compose a ransom letter together, softening the lines between confrontation and collaboration.

The truth about Tiffany’s deception comes to light when the trio finds a missing-child poster, and Tiffany’s remorse washes over her as she heads toward the orphanage in shame. Yet her journey doesn’t end there. Along the way, she encounters two runaway orphans who reveal a harsher reality: Auntie uses children for mandatory labor to harvest sugar beets, siphoning the sweetness into a pastry-making machine that powers her desserts. Tiffany’s path twists again as she secretly enters the orphanage while the runaways are captured, exposing Auntie’s pastry hoard to the other orphans and sparking a spark of collective outrage.

Auntie, furious, seeks to punish Tiffany, but a dramatic turn arrives when the robbers themselves materialize on the scene—revealed to be runaway orphans who have found a way to mend bonds with Tiffany. The confrontation escalates, and Auntie’s grip on power falters. In a moment of frenzy, Auntie falls into her own pastry-making vat and is transformed into a cake that the orphans, hungry for justice, ultimately eat.

With Auntie out of the way, the robbers leverage their wealth to purchase the orphanage and convert it into a true haven for all the uncared-for children. What begins as a precarious life on the road blossoms into a thriving town, where the residents come to revere the trio not as fugitives, but as guardians who turned their infamy into a lasting gift for the vulnerable. The story moves gently between hardship and hope, painting a world where redemption can grow from unlikely beginnings and where a community can rise around those it once feared.