3 Dev Adam (3 Mighty Men)(1973)

Director: T. Fikret Ucak

Starring: Turks

More Info: IMDB

Plot: Istanbul is being terrorized by a crime wave let by an evil Spider-Man, and the police call in American superhero Captain America and Mexican wrestler Santo to put a stop to it.








My Rating: 5/10

Would I watch it again? Not unless I edited it down to 45 minutes.

I love me some kooky world cinema. This is only my second taste of Turkish cinema, the first being a kabob western based on Lucky Luke (it was bad). In the 1970s the Turks were really bad (or good?) at a total disregard of copyright laws stealing everywhere they could. By the end of the decade there was a Turkish Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman - you name it, they were ripping it off. They even had the balls to use actual footage from the films they were ripping off as well as the music score from popular films.

So I was excited about this one. I'd heard about how nuts it was with having these three main characters - especially with Spider-Man in green with monstrous eye brows as a bad guy. I'm all over it. It's bad, sure, but in a fun way. It's got some really bad/campy fight scenes. There are two that go on forever and that's too long. At 81 minutes you'd think that'd be just right. Right? Seriously, it's one of those, "Let's get everybody together tonight, drink heavily and watch a fucked-up movie" kind of flick. But it does have some fat that needs to be trimmed; about 30 minutes worth.

At least it's got English subtitles which is more than that kabob western I watched had or the copy of the Turkish Star Wars that I'm waiting to watch. Music-wise they're blatantly using cues from the Bond film, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. I could easily think of better Bond scores to hijack than that one. Not knocking John Barry but his score to the previous Bond picture, OHMSS is better and more exciting. But what the fuck do I know?


This movie is gloriously bad. It only ranks lower than normal because of the painfully dull slow spots AND the ending has Captain American (NOT in his costume but in street clothes) fighting Spider-Man only to kill him and then another Spider-Man shows up to fight him. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you there are probably 8 or 9 Spider-Man guys that show up one at a time as each one is destroyed. It lasted a good 10 to 15 minutes and I actually found myself yelling, "Come the fuck on already. Christ on crutches!" getting really frustrated. And THEN when he's defeated the last one you see yet another Spider-Man get into a sedan and drive away leaving our two heroes and their woman standing there laughing like the end of a LOVE BOAT episode. Other than that it was great. Where else are you going to get to see a man attacked by a guinea pig comin' at him through a giant tube? Well, besides Richard Gere's apartment. OH!