3 Dev Adam

In the world of Turkish cinema, Spider-Man leads a gang of counterfeiter who use murders people with outboar dmotors, axes and man-eating guinea pigs. Santo is a secret agent who rarely wears his mask and puts things directly into his pants, pockets by damned. And Captain America doesn't have a shield, smokes and brings his girlfriend, Julia, along.

Just strap yourself in — 3 Giant Men is a ride into insanity, the kind of world that Sergeant Joe Friday worried about when kids in the 60's started doing LSD and jumping out of windows.

Istanbul! The Spider's Gang — led by Spider-Man — are taking over. They cut the head off of a woman with a boat propeller to start the movie off right.

The film then kicks into the craziest title sequence ever — they basically filmed a board of photographs, pulling out on image after image, with the type for each credit simply vinyl type on a board.

Julia, Captain America's girlfriend, is captured but is able to send a distress call to Cap, who rescues her but can't catch Spider-Man after a battle through a graveyard. Captain America is played by Aytekin Akkaya, who was Ali in Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (better known as Turkish Star Wars) and Ukan in Yor, the Hunter from the Future.

I'd like to inform all of you right now that Spider-Man has the biggestt eyebrows you've ever seen. He can also die and come back to life with no lasting damage, for some reason. He also gets his men to drop off what I can only refer to as mini-tents near mafia bases, emerging from them to kill other gangs.

Meanwhile, Santo infiltrates a dojo known for counterfeiting. Santo's fight style is to basically no sellkicks to the face and do rolls and judo. So, you know, nothing at all like he real Santo. He also likes to look right at the camera whenever he is film. I could watch Santo fight karate men for hours and hours of my life. Santo gets captured, but escapes with the evidence. He and Cap raid a hideout while Spider-Man kills a woman in the shower.

Spidey calls out the dude who let Santo escape, punishing him by putting a tube over his head and letting two guinea pigs EAT HIS FACE. Sorry to scream, this movie this movie is just one shock after the other. Spidey tops it off by watching couple shower (!), killing them by stabbing them together ala Jason Vorhees to Jeff and Sandra in Friday the 13th Part 2 (!!) and then stealing a statue that has no importance toward the rest of the movie (!!!).

Yes. If you are keeping score, Spider-Man has two different shower based kill scenes in this movie. If you like your Peter Parker murderous, then this flick is for you. But wait what would make this movie better? If you answered watching Spider-Man have sex while surrounded by frightening puppets, then you are on the same wavelength as the insane people who made this movie. You should really speak to someone or be on one of this lists where you have to announce yourself to all of your neighbors when you move.

Santo and Captain America then battle Spider-Man again, where we find out that there are four Spideys, several of which die horribly. After some undercover work at a club — the same club we keep seeing with a girl in shadow spinning boob tassles — Spider-Man's goons kidnap our heroes. They fight one another, but it's all a clever ruse, as they kill almost all of the gang members, including Spider-Man's girlfriend (who is not Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, Betty Brant, Carlie Cooper or Liz Allen).

There's a battle that doesn't stop until every Spider-Man is dead. Spideys get knocked off ladders, their necks broken and crushed by presses. It's an orgy of Spider destruction, highlighted by Captain America's trademark offense: one footed dropkicks , face slaps and punches to the belly.

But just as Cap is about to leave town, he sees one more Spidey. However, it's just a kid in a mask.

I don't know if it's possible to love a movie as much as I love 3 Giant Men. Today's superhero movies fail to capture the majesty of this film. It answers the big questions, the ones no one had the guts to ask or care about. Cap punching Spider in the breadbasket? It's in there. Santo powerbombing goons and then putting them into submission holds in a nightclub? Yes. Wacky asides with comical music? Yes. A Cap that smokes and wears a leisure suit? Evet.

3 Giant Men comes in at 78 minutes of what I can only imagine being in a coma and pumped full of iowaska would feel like. Everyone knows all about Japanese Spider-Man Takuya Yamashiro (they do, right?), but laughing, killing, giant eyebrow having Turkish Spider-Man? He is the greatest villain ever in the best superhero movie ever made.

So here's an odd movie. Spider Man is a bad guy. And his mask is radically different. And he has these massive eyebrows--or maybe they were antenna? Anyhow, this has nothing to do with everybody's favorite webslinger. Technically, he is called Spider Man and kinda dresses like him, but instead uses the awesome powers of a switchblade to kill people and steal statues. Oh, and I think he can clone himself whenever he dies. Maybe. Didn't make much sense at the time.

Come to combat this villain are the awesome duo of Captain America and El Santo. For those of you not up on your lucha libre, El Santo is the most famous Mexican wrestler of all time, having starred in approximately 100 movies in his forty-year career. The silver-masked man revealed his identity only a month before he died and was laid to rest in his cloak and cowl. Anyhow, they're fighting Spider Man. At least Captain America (not an American by any means) is, since El Santo isn't in this too much. After a few rumbles, good is triumphant.

Worth a see? Definitely, if you like your cheese thick and incomprehensible (as detailed previously, there are no English dubbed or subtitled prints). It's no classic, but it is fun if you've got a wad of meat in each shoe (I never did understand that saying). Don't look too hard, but if you're in the back of a small, locally owned video store and this falls off a shelf onto your head, rent it.

What a movie! The turks in the 1970's would put any bit of any country's pop culture and whir it in a blender and shoot it. This film has a homicidally insane Spiderman in a costume that looks like the director's elderly mother made with a rusty sewing machine and poor eyesight. Another great scene - the guy who is Capn America stops and talks on the side of a busy road WHILE CHANGING INTO HIS CAPTAIN AMERICA SUIT!!!(so much for secret identity) There is awful fight scenes - truly so bad that you laugh your head off. The clothes and hairstyles are stunningly ugly. Amazing. For true cheese lovers. Recommended!

It's got Spider-Man as a crime lord choking women in bathtubs, Captain America karate kicking guys to kingdom come, not to mention the James Bond theme, what more could you ask for?

It's your unfriendly neighbourhood Spiderman! But he's green! And he's in Turkey! And he's ripped a hole in his mask so you can see his bushy eyebrows! And he can't shoot webs anymore! Or climb up walls! Peter Parker must have been bitten by ANOTHER radioactive spider or something, presumably while on holiday in Turkey, because suddenly he's EVIL and likes nothing better than chopping people up with a knife, skewering them in the shower, and, especially, doing lame ass kung-fu on them.

You know this film is going to be amazing when - BEFORE THE OPENING CREDITS - Spidey buries a girl up to her neck on the beach, then gets two blokes in a boat to reverse the outboard motor blades into her face. Seems the cops were right all along to be suspicious of that ol' web-slinger. Then those opening credits -- photographs (like actual paper photographs) taken on the set have been stuck on a wall next to fridge-magnet letters spelling out the title, and the camera zooms away from them very quickly...this passes for special effects in 70s Turkish cinema. The theme tune has exactly the same melody as "Diamonds Are Forever". There is no Turkish word for "copyright violation" - as if the psycho slasher Spiderman wasn't proof of that already.

As if that wasn't enough, wait -- Evil Spidey is terrorizing Istanbul, so who's the best person to call to deal with the problem? Captain America of course! (well it makes more sense than trusting in the hapless raincoated detective who gets sliced up by Spiderman - who then looks into the camera and says "ho ho ho ho ho. Adios!") Oh, and also Santo, the masked Mexican wrestler. Santo is a trifle fatter than his Mexican version, but at least his blank face mask can be replicated easily - Captain America is a tougher task for the costume designer (who, looking at the costumes, is almost certainly the director's mum). He has the "A" on his head, but he has no shield -- then again, Spidey has no webs, so that evens things out.

You have to see this movie. If necessary, go to Turkey to see it. Even better than the notorious Turkish remake of "Star Wars", and a 500% improvement on the recent Hollywood Spiderman. Did Spidey gruesomely murder a lovemaking couple in that movie? Well exactly.