Sunday, November 8, 2009

3 Dev Adam (3 Mighty Men, 1973)



AKA “Turkish Spider-Man”, AKA “Shoot Me Now”.
3 Dev Adam is an interesting study to say the least; of foreign adaptations of American cultural icons.
Namely, Spider-Man and Captain America.
Yes, you heard me right.
Mind you, the only thing American about this Captain is his costume.
Also, Spider-Man in this film is no hero; he’s the head of the “Spider Gang”, chops women’s head’s up with boat propellers, strangles them in the shower, and uses guinea pigs to kill.
I’m certain they were evil guinea pigs at least.
Also had to love the extremely long eyebrows protruding from the eye sockets of Spidey’s mask……that really shows he’s evil.
Another unauthorized character in this film who teams up with Captain America is the Mexican masked wrestling hero, El Santo (AKA Samson).
Unfortunately, unlike the real El Santo, this version is depicted without his mask on numerous occasions throughout the film.
Anyone who is a fan of the masked wrestlers knows that they never, never, ever are seen in public without their mask on.
But, since this is a fake El Santo, I suppose we can make the exception.
The film takes place in Istanbul, where Not-Spider-Man and his criminal group surface in the city with counterfeit US Dollars.
A small task force is brought in, consisting of Captain America, his girlfriend, and El Santo.
The film opens with Spider-Man and his own girlfriend, along with a few of his henchman burying a woman in the sand on the beach up to her neck, and then backing a boat propeller into her face.
Then the opening credits roll.
Wait….what?
Well, the film does try to grab your attention from the beginning, at least.
The remainder of this film is spent trying to infiltrate Spider-Man’s gang on a few occasions.
First, Cap’s girlfriend tries, taking pictures at the villain’s hideout, but is captured.
She sends out an S.O.S., using her super-duper-secret-beepy-watch.
Luckily, Cap is tooling around town sporting a jacket so loud it should come with a volume knob.
He receives the signal on his own super-duper-secret-beepy-watch and springs into action.
And by that, I mean he raids the house, and what follows is what is going to fill most of the remainder of the film.
Fight scenes so goofy I found myself giggling uncontrollably almost continuously.
At times I expected cartoon sound effects, but was sadly denied.
Anyway, he rescues his girlfriend, and after another goofy fight with Spider-Man, the villain escapes in car that looks to have more mileage than Brittany Spears.
There is one thing I have to give to the lead male actors in this film though; they really throw themselves into the fight scenes, even if the result is more comedic than exciting.
Santo himself has his own fighting scenes, namely taking on some karate blokes at a dojo being used as a front for the counterfeiting.
And this scene is more reminiscent of a schoolyard brawl then a superhero fight.
Also this Spider-Man either has the ability to clone himself on the fly, or he tricked a bunch of his hapless henchmen into wearing the same costume as himself, and having the pulp beaten out of them.
Anyone who complains that today’s superhero film adaptations from Hollywood take too many liberties with the characters needs to see this film, and be thankful that Hollywood doesn’t take the same approach.
Well, ok…..except for Catwoman

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