3 Dev Adam

3 Dev Adam (translated as Three Mighty Men but also known as Turkish Spider-Man vs. Captain Turkish America) is an infamous low-budget Turkish movie starring the superheroes Captain America, Santo and Spider-Man as the main characters. Notably, Spider-Man is the villain of the film.

3 Dev Adam

Synopsis

The story takes place in Istanbul, where a violent criminal organization led by Spider-Man ("Spider's Gang") surfaces in the city with counterfeit US dollars. A small task-force consisting of Captain America, Santo and Captain America's girlfriend (named Julia) arrives to help local police stop Spider-Man and his gang.

The movie begins with the brutal murder of a woman with a boat propeller. Spider-Man and his gang first bury the woman in the sand up to her neck, and then slowly move the boat's propeller into her face. Spider-Man and his girlfriend, Nadia, watch the murder with great satisfaction. Afterwards, Spider-Man kills a group of undercover agents using his switchblade.

Captain America's girlfriend, who seems to have infiltrated Spider-Man's hideout, begins taking pictures but is captured and taken to a house in a remote location. She manages to send an SOS signal to Cap by using her watch (by playing around with the watch's built-in light, to be exact). Captain receives the signal and raids the house by ripping through a cardboard wall and beating up all of the gang members. After saving the woman, Captain America sees Spider-Man outside the house and chases him. A wild brawl occurs, but Spider-Man manages to escape using a very old car.

Meanwhile, Mexico's national superhero/wrestler, Santo, infiltrates the dojo that is used as a front for counterfeiting. He is captured and held at gunpoint by the dojo's owner ("Mr. Director"). Santo manages to incapaciate the owner by punching him multiple times while the latter attempts to remove Santo's mask. After recovering evidence and shoving it into his crotch, Santo tries to escape but is confronted by several fighters. After a long fight scene Santo reaches the HQ and presents the lists of addresses used by Spider-Man's gang for counterfeiting operations. Thanks to this information the police raid all these areas, which makes Spider-Man furious.

At night Spider-Man enters a house and strangles a woman to death while she is taking a bath. Her breasts are briefly visible in this scene.

The next scene concerns the horrific torture and execution of Mr. Director by Spider-Man. Despite the Director's pleas, Spider-Man's henchmen tie him to a pole while they put a long transparent pipe to his face. After that, Spider-Man releases two hungry guinea pigs to the pipe. The guinea pigs attack Mr. Director's face and slowly kill him in the most painful way.

The next scene for some reason jumps to a club scene where the Head Inspector goes undercover and watches a scantily clad woman dance. Meanwhile, Captain and Santo raid a very important hideout where most of the counterfeiting operation is taking place. They manage to shut down the hideout while Spider-Man kills a couple in the shower with a skewer while they are making love. He steals some sort of statue and runs away.

Another fight between heroes and Spider-Man begins. For some reason Spider-Man "regenerates" himself over and over after his death. He is beaten to a pulp by Santo and strangled to death by Captain but reappears again and manages to escape.

Captain America and Santo decide to go undercover in the club that Inspector was in. Spider-Man's gang notice them and a fight occurs. The heroes are seemingly overpowered this time and are taken to Spider-Man's hideout. Once there they act like they are fighting themselves to confuse their captors but manage to break out and eliminate most of the gang members. During this scene Spider-Man's girlfriend is inadvertently killed and Spider-Man flees, with Captain America in hot pursuit.

As Captain catches up to Spider-Man, Spider-Man shoots him with his revolver but Captain seems to be unaffected by the bullets. In this final fight, Spider-Man again "multiplies" himself more than one occasion; his head is crushed by a machine, caught in a machine and crushed and finally he is caught between the tracks of a conveyor belt and his head is crushed with a giant cardboard box.

At the final scene the heroes are about to leave Istanbul, but Captain America sees the face of Spider-Man in a taxi and furiously runs and removes the mask of the person in the car, realizing that it was a kid wearing a toy mask. Captain America, Santo and Captain's girlfriend laugh while the kid sticks out his tongue.

Depiction of characters

The movie is notorious for its horrible depiction of famous superheroes. It is highly unlikely that director and producers of the movie asked permission from Marvel Comics to depict Spider-Man or Captain America or Santo himself for playing the his character or Marvel Comics has any knowledge about this movie, which displays their characters from "a very different perspective".

    * Santo Most "normally" depicted character. (Compared to Spider-Man and Captain America) Although Santo was famous during 70s, he was relatively unknown in the Turkey. It's unknown why director and writer decide to use Santo in the movie.

    * Captain America Played by Aytekin Akkaya, an action star, Captain is little more faithfully depicted. His costume, although tailored poorly, is much better than Spider-Man's costume. He also has a girlfriend with him whose identity never explained in the movie. Just like he is shown in the poster, he doesn't have his shield.

    * Spider-Man Most dreadfully depicted character, Spider-Man in the movie (He is called "Evil Spider-Man" in the on-line comminuties such as youtube) definitely doesn't look like his real-life self. His costume for one thing has many flaws: costume has no web patterns, the blue parts of his costume is actually painted light green, he wears black leather gloves, leather belt and black leather boots, he is not looking athletic like Peter Parker (actor playing him has a pot-belly), Spider symbol on his chest and back drawn incorrectly, his mask doesn't have lenses in the eye sockets and most importantly, he has extremely long eyebrows that extend beyond his mask.

His personality is also not like real Spider-Man. He is depicted as a psychopathic murderer and ruthless gang leader with a knack for sadictic laughs. It is unknown why writer and director depicted Spider-Man as a such horrific villain. His girlfriend named Nadia, is as deranged and ruthless as himself. As expected, he doesn't have any special powers at all. Unlike in the poster, he never uses his webs in combat, preferring brute force and whatever he can find to dispatch his opponents such as a switchblade. Although he is not seen crawling walls, at some part of the movie he can be seen entering a house by crawling through a rain pipe. Real Spider-Man's awesome combat abilities and agility cannot be seen in the movie as fighting scenes are extremely amateurish and funny rather than exciting. (Such as many movies created in Turkey during that time. ) In the movie ,for some reason, it is stated that Spider-Man's gang originates from the far east. (Which is also incorrect, as Spider-Man is a western comic character. )

Trivia

Aytekin Akkaya also played the second lead in the Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, also known as Turkish Star Wars.