Outrageous Turkish films become guilty pleasure

PAUL D. ROBERTSON, Film Analyzer

I love the 80’s Turkish film industry. In particular, I love the knockoff, independent 80’s Turkish film industry. It is reductionist and downright absurd to pretend that the entirety of the country’s film output can be summed up by the likes of “Turkish Star Wars” or “Turkish Rambo.” There’s a real sense of fun that comes from movies like that, movies that take established properties and turn them into off–the–walls, paper-thin interpretations of themselves with lower production values than the laptop I’m typing this on.

But these movies rarely use the actual names of the intellectual properties they’re appropriating. For example, perhaps the most well-known of these is “Turkish Star Wars,” however, its real title is “Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam.” This is roughly translated to “The Man Who Saved The World.” Other movies of this vein at least pretend to be their own thing for the most part. One of the more infamous and strange of these is “3 Dev Adam.”

“3 Dev Adam,” roughly translated to “Three Big Men” or “Three Great Men,” is a movie from 1973 where Captain America teams up with El Santo to fight the evil criminal mastermind, Spider–Man, and his gang of high-profile thieves. I feel the need to reiterate; this is a movie that exists.

The plot is fairly straightforward; Spider–Man leads a gang of criminals called the “Spider Gang,” dealing in counterfeit American dollars and performing high-profile thefts in Istanbul, thus prompting Captain America, his girlfriend (possibly the only original character in the movie) and El Santo to chase after him and his gang through the outskirts of the city.

During one of the fight scenes, Spider-Man kills a whole bunch of people and eventually reveals to have three backup Spider–Men just in case, all of whom are promptly defeated by the heroes in awkwardly choreographed fight sequences. Summarizing the plot of the movie would be pretty much pointless, since the spectacle of it all lies in seeing the bizarre alternate versions of these fairly recognizable characters and how they act in the movie.

The character who’s changed the most from his original incarnation is Spider–Man. His most memorable scene in the movie is killing a guy by having something that looks like a hamster eat his eyes. Another notable feature is Spider–Man’s costume, which looks to have been made with two t-shirts and colored markers.

Captain America has a decent costume, given the budget of the film. The only thing missing is his iconic shield.

El Santo is also an oddity, in that he goes for most of the movie without his trademark wrestling mask. This is odd, because the whole reason he is in this movie seems to be due to his popularity in 80’s Turkey.

A bizarre thought was that our heroes show no restraint in killing other people. Maybe in Turkey this wasn’t as big of an issue as it would be in the West. But seeing bootleg Captain America strangle a Spider–Man knockoff is a bizarre sight in any movie, regardless of budget or national origin. El Santo should never be straight-up killing people; there’s something deeply wrong about that. And while I’m making the movie sound way more violent than it is, the goofy editing and special effects work makes any attempt at serious action or shock become unintentionally hilarious.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of production information about this movie, due to how old and obscure it was up until it was dug up by comedy website I–Mockery a few years back. It gained a cult following in the wake of the semi-ironic, Turkish knockoff discoveries online in the past few years.

Also, unfortunately, the movie is really hard to find these days. It used to be hosted on Google Video years back, but after a Greek company bought the rights to the movie, it was taken down. You’ll most likely find clips of it on YouTube or other sites, and it’s been covered more in detail by several online film blogs. The DVD release goes for about two hundred dollars online and comes with English subtitles.

If you can find it online, or in some other capacity, it makes for a fun watch with friends. But even then, it’s probably not worth tracking down beyond the simple appeal of the wackiness of its premise. If nothing else, it should make for a good conversation starter.