3 Dev Adam (1973)

(Before I start, just know that the movie I'm about to dive into is an all-Turkish-speaking film without subtitles, so I'm only guessing at what is happening; however, I fear that even if I understood every word these characters were saying I still would be at a disadvantage because I am not yet legally insane. Or Turkish. Whichever.)

Anyone who knows anything about Turkish movies (like I think I would, since I have seen more than a few of them, as my past posts and future reviews will attest to...) will tell you that their most widely-recognized products are the ones in which great liberties are taken with copyrights.

Why is this? Because worldwide copyright laws simply do not carry over into the magical country where they can play wild and loose with some of our best-loved pop characters and twist them into their own maniacal creations. Sure, they may look the same but they sure ain't the same.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in this glowing example of Turkish ingenuity. Not only did the film-makers get to work with such heroic characters as Captain America, El Santo and Spider-Man, but they worked it so that Spidey is the BAD GUY!

3 Dev Adam (or 3 Mighty Men, to translate for the Anglos out there...) busts out of the gate early from a glowing Turkish production credit, and I mean it is literally glowing - with a pulsing pink and green light! - complete with men chanting "aw-sen" in the background then drops us onto a beach where a paunchy, green-suited Spider-Man with the biggest eyebrows this side of Groucho Marx orders his henchmen (who don't wear fancy costumes, unfortunately) to bury a woman up to her neck in the sand then lift up a motorboat and back it up to propeller off her screaming face.

See? He's evil!

Then some overcoat-clad guys come snooping around and find nothing until (and I swear this is a real moment in the film) Evil Spidey pops out of a makeshift wood plank-constructed tent and stabs one of them with a switchblade, laughing and announcing in perfect English, "Adios, Mafia!"

During the course of the film, you will also witness Evil Spidey strangle and stab to death several women, some while showering, some while in bed, some while with other men. Just like any other evil villain wearing a mis-colored Spider-Man suit would do.

Moving on: this is clearly a case for Captain America...played by a man named Aytekin Akkaya, more easily recognizable as one of the two space jockeys from Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (aka The Man Who Saves The World, aka Turkish Star Wars). Don't get me wrong; he at least looks fit enough to belong in a tight-fitting suit (unlike Turkish Spider-Man), but this is a Turkish movie, and the man playing Cap is Turkish, speaks Turkish fluently as well. So, shouldn't he be named Captain Turkey? Or maybe Captain Turkish America? Or Captain AmeriTurk?

And famed crime-fighting Mexican wrestler El Santo is part of this film too, emerging fresh from a shower without his Mexican wrestling mask, but sporting some bright whitey-tighties. At least he's modest, I guess. This character is also played by a Turkish actor (Yavuz Selekman), also speaks the language, but come on - a Mexican superhero in a Turkish movie? Apparently, El Santo was (and still is, I understand) very popular in Turkey, a statue of him even residing in downtown Istanbul. So I guess it makes perfect sense for him to be taking part in a superhero movie...but one where he spends a good majority of his time WITHOUT his signature mask? Yeesh, Turkey - at least play by some of the rules.

Something else before I continue the review: what kind of a stupid hero combination is Captain America and El Santo? I know the Turks care not a whit about grabbing up the rest of the world's folklore and running buck wild with it, so why not team Turkish Superman and Turkish Batman? They've had their own separate Turkish incarnations in separate films, so it's not like they're unfamiliar characters. Or maybe some other combo like Turkish Green Lantern and Turkish Martian Manhunter? Or Turkish Wonder Woman and Turkish Supergirl? Or Turkish Flash and Turkish Captain Marvel? Captain America and El Santo don't even have similar superpowers to play off of. Not that Superman and Batman do, but don't Cap and Santo have different unions or something? Only in Turkey can they all come together, I guess.

Back to business: seems (from what I could gather) Evil Spidey's gang is spreading fake American currency throughout Istanbul - yes, that's right; fake US dollars in Turkey. Let that one sink in. And Cap and Santo break into several points throughout the city to get clues to the hows and wheres of Evil Spidey's operation.

Sound like a typical heroic Marvel comic adventure? 1940's film-noir maybe, but not something that involved characters with super-human powers. In fact not a one of the familiar heroes (or anti-heroes, in Evil Spidey's case here) does anything they are associated with:

Captain America doesn't have his trademark shield to throw, nor the little wings on the side of his head.

El Santo fights a few of the bad guys but doesn't exhibit any wrestling moves or any of the grace or style of a typical wrestler (even a nice signature Hulk Hogan leg drop would have been welcomed).

Evil Spidey doesn't spin one stupid web, climb a wall (unless you count his clinging on a drainpipe to scale a house exterior once) or use his Spider Sense at all. He does have one special power, which I'll get to in a minute.

Anyway, the superhero anomalies aren't the only point of interest in 3 Dev Adam: there are, in fact, some awesomely jaw-dropping scenes that will take even the most jaded film-goer by surprise and, perhaps, bring a smile to their jaded lips.

I already mentioned the boat propeller and woodpile/switchblade scenes, but those, my friends, are only the very tip-top of an extremely large iceberg of nonsense. There is a scene where Evil Spidey kills a disobedient toady by feeding his face to killer guinea pigs (believe it), another where Captain America is foiled in a foot chase scene by the winds of a medium-sized factory floor fan, a show-stopper where Evil Spidey has a romp in bed with his evil girlfriend and the scene is inter cut with hand puppets dancing around (Hand. Puppets. In a sex scene.), another scene shows El Santo fighting a bunch of scrawny karate students wherein no one involved displays any fighting skills...

Oh, there are so many scenes like this peppered throughout a movie that seems to not care about such mundane ideas as plot, continuity, sense, sticking close to your source material and so on. To make a whole list of such things that happen during the course of 3 Dev Adam would threaten to be a ticking off of every single scene from beginning to end. And if I was going to do that, I'd just post the whole movie and let you see for yourselves that such a thing exists. It'd be the only way to justify all the nonsense you've read before.

Now for the one power that Evil Spidey has that I said I'd talk about earlier: during the later part of the film, when Cap and Santo close in on Evil Spidey and seemingly kill him...Evil Spidey simply regenerates in another part of the room they are all in (!) and the chase starts anew. This happens several times, with Evil Spidey getting killed by getting beaten to death by the good guys, having his head crushed in a mechanical press, getting mangled in factory gears, only to pop up somewhere else as good as new.

I mean, geez; even Captain AmeriTurk gets blown over by a floor fan and has his fingers stomped on, both of which he barely recovers from. Isn't he supposed to be, you know, invulnerable? And all Turkish El Santo has going for him is being very lucky he never gets shot.

Director T. Fikret Uçak was apparently familiar with Turkish action films, but writer Doğan Tamer was more famous as an actor than scripter, and neither one seemed to be familiar with the mythos of the three heroes featured herein. They, much like the ideas and dialogue, are used at random and without any sense as to what came before or would follow.

In other words, they knew that Captain America, El Santo and Spider-Man existed but, like fan fiction written by an eight year-old in the early Seventies, had no idea what to do with them and simply wrote an ungainly story that just happened to feature three superheroes.

Another sad fact you may notice if you choose to watch 3 Dev Adam is that not only do none of the women have names or do very much of note in this film, but the only purpose any of them serve is as background girlfriend, victim, 85% naked dancing girl or punching bag for the bad guys (yes, women get beaten but don't worry - it's by bad guys who get what's coming to them anyway >:P). Gloria Steinem would be thrown into a catatonic seizure from this flick.

So here we have, along with Turkish Star Wars, Turkish Wizard of Oz, Turkish Superman, Turkish Batman and Turkish Exorcist, yet another reason to question why some people are ever allowed within 500 yards of a movie camera.

A few months back I heard about a movie made in the '60s named Batman Dracula, directed as it was by no less than Andy Warhol on New York City rooftops and in cramped closeups in small rooms, starring Warhol's zonked-out regulars and filmed in grainy black-and-white. From what I hear, it is pretty much incoherent.

I think I found 3 Dev Adam's double-bill partner.