INTRO: When you’re a hugely successful bodybuilder from a small village in Austria, and you’ve not only managed to successfully make the transition from pumping iron to pumping lead pipes into Aussie bad guys, the world is seemingly very much your oyster. Or so they say. As you’ll no doubt know nothing was standing in the Austrian Oak’s way when he set his mind to prove people wrong. Nobody, especially the studios, were convinced that he could win audiences over as a believable comedy performer, yet his unlikely partnership with the diminutive and awesome Danny DeVito in Twins proved that not only could Arnie bring the gags, but that he could also bring the box-office numbers to satiate the stuffy studio heads.
So, just where did his career go next? Now that Arnie had proved to people that he was box office gold for comedy, as well as action and sci-fi, did he opt to further his acting abilities even further? Maybe a musical? Perhaps he’d make a great Jean Valjean with the help of a vocal coach and some auto-tuning, I mean, it almost worked for Russel Crowe. Or, did he go down the Rom-com route and team up with somebody like Julia Roberts, who was also box office gold at the time for that female-skewed demographic? No, don’t be daft. As funny as it would be seeing Arnie playing a rich entrepreneur, who falls for a plucky prostitute, his next movie saw the star back on familiar ground with the 1990 sci-fi flick, Total Recall. Arnie had form for the genre with the amazing action, sci-fi and horror classic, The Terminator so he knew what audiences wanted from those kinds of movies. However, could a trip to Mars with a visionary director and ladies with three breasts turn out to be the right move for the Austrian Oak? Let’s find out right here, on Arnie Revisited!
SET-UP: 1990 was a seminal year for this movie fan. I wasn’t quite old enough to get into the movie theatres the traditional way, so me, my brother and my pals had to be creative when it came to catching the movies we were desperate to see. The world of horror saw great films like Tremors, Misery, Night of the Living Dead, IT, Bride of Re-Animator, Gremlins 2, and Arachnophobia. OK, I know that one isn’t necessarily horror per se, but it was one of the only movies I could actually legitimately pay to get in the cinema to see, and I loved the spider-infested flick, especially John Goodman’s over-the-top exterminator Delbert McClintock. We were also treated to fun Sci-Fi movies such as Predator 2, Robocop 2, Back to the Future III and Dark Angel. I mention both the horror and sci-fi genres as, although Total Recall arguably falls more into the former, you can argue that it has some gory roots in the horror genre also.
Total Recall is based on the short story, We Can’t Remember It Wholesale by Philip K. Dick, whose other mind-bending work has been adapted into movies such as Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly. The screenplay was written by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Gary Goldman. It was way back in 1974 that Shusett bought the rights to Dick’s short story but the vast scope of the project kept it in the dreaded development hell at various studios for over sixteen years. Over this time forty scripts, seven different directors and multiple actors were cast as the main protagonist, Quaid. Yet, the project kept stalling. It wasn’t until Arnold Schwarzenegger convinced the great Carolco Pictures to buy the rights and make him the movie’s star, that the project finally gained some traction.
With the rights for the movie sorted and production able to get going the small matter of finding the perfect director to take on the visionary project was underway. Before they went bankrupt, the project had been sold to the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, AKA the DEG, and the legendary producer considered Richard Rush, Lewis Teague, Russell Mulcahy, and Fred Schepisi to direct the film, before finally opting to go with body horror maestro David Cronenberg, in 1984. However, those pesky creative differences that can often derail a movie reared their ugly head, and sadly Cronenberg left the project. His vision was to bring the movie back to the tone of the original short story, whereas the writers and producers had more of a Raiders of the Lost Ark goes to Mars vibe in mind. More heartache was to follow as, despite set construction being underway on the movie and production costs as much as $8 million being spent, the DEG went bankrupt, leaving the crew without work and the sets destroyed.
It was during the mid-eighties that Arnie first heard about the concept for Total Recall, and during filming for Predator, he read the script and agreed to tackle the futuristic mind-bender with producer Joel Silver. However, frustratingly for all involved, the movie was still unable to go ahead due to its prohibitive budget and because Dino De Laurentiis didn’t feel that Arnie was the right action star to lead the movie. Which seems ludicrous looking back now. Arnie had an ace up his sleeve though, that could get the movie back on track, thanks to his old friends at Carolco Pictures. As I mentioned earlier, the star managed to persuade the independent studio to purchase the rights for $3 million including pre-production costs. Caroloco completed the acquisition of the majority of DEG’s assets in April 1989, and with Arnie now having substantial influence over the project, ended up taking a reported salary of between $10 – $11 million, plus a cut of the film’s profits.
Ultimately, directing duties went to Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven, who had already shown Hollywood that he could master visionary sci-fi filmmaking with the amazing Robocop from 1987. Much like the plot of Total Recall, which basically sees a totalitarian government colonizing a planet, Verhoeven was taking the next step in his own colonization of Hollywood, and through his own first-hand experiences, often crafted his movies around life under fascism. He had already proven his worth as a provocateur in his native Holland, pre-Robo, by exploring the extremities of violence and sexuality in his films. So, with not only arthouse and big budget projects behind him, he was the perfect fit for the messed-up world of Total Recall.
With the production boasting a great studio to oversee production, a visionary director onboard, plus Hollywood’s greatest action star in the lead, what about the rest of the cast? Joining the Austrian Oak was Sharon Stone, in an ass, and groin-kicking role as Quaid’s wife Lori, Ronny Cox as the governor of the mutant colony, Michael Ironside as Richter plus a melee of great 90s character actors who flesh out an already stellar cast.
REVIEW: From my somewhat hazy recollection of seeing the film for the first time, there were several iconic scenes that lived long in the memory. The three-breasted lady? Yup! I mean, I was a young lad, hormones all over the place so yeah, that was a fun scene. Arnie’s eyes bulging out of their sockets? Loved it. The part where Quaid emerges from his disguise and throws the lady’s head at the armed men before it explodes is also awesome. The VFX still look great, even though they have that wonderfully rubbery 80s look. But that’s part of the charm of the movie. I think the fact that I first watched it courtesy of a grainy VHS copy that was ‘procured’ by my brother’s dodgy friends, also lends some nostalgia to the film for me. I’ve seen it countless times and as you can probably tell, I love it.
The plot centres on Arnie’s protagonist, Douglas Quaid, who’s haunted by a recurring dream about a journey to Mars. He seeks answers about the dream and buys a holiday at Rekall Inc. who sell implanted memories. However, something goes wrong with the memory implantation and he remembers being a secret agent fighting against the evil Mars administrator Cohaagen. This leads to an unexpected and somewhat harrowing series of events that makes him question the actual reality of his situation.
Looking back on the movie for this retrospective, it’s actually interesting to think of it as the middle part of Verhoeven’s sci-fi trilogy from the era, sandwiched nicely between Robocop and Starship Troopers. There are more politics in those other great genre movies, and while Total Recall follows similar themes, it’s still an Arnie actioner. So, it’s naturally a hugely exciting, entertaining film, chock full of cartoonish violence, great VFX and yes, cheesy one-liners. The film is so wonderfully iconic that I could talk endlessly about the most memorable scenes for hours: the Johnny-cabs, the walk-through x-ray scanner, the three-breasted mutant call girl, and the scenes on Mars. It’s such a great piece of 90s filmmaking that makes you yearn for Verhoeven to tackle more Hollywood blockbusters nowadays.
LEGACY / NOW: Total Recall was released on June 1st 1990 in the US and Canada. It grossed 25.5 million dollars over its opening weekend. It finished as the number one film of the weekend, ahead of Back to the Future Part III, which made $10.3 million, and was in its second weekend of release, and Bird on a Wire, that had taken $6.3 million, in its third week. The film is estimated to have grossed $261.4 million worldwide, making it the fifth highest-grossing film of 1990 behind Dances with Wolves, Pretty Woman, Home Alone and Ghost.
Critically, the movie was met with a mixed reaction, but those who praised the movie were impressed by Arnie’s performance and the production values but were put off by the violence. The Washington Post’s review compared it unfavourably with Stallone’s action film Cobra, saying it was, “disappointing in its overuse of violence and abandonment of cynicism and creativity for machoism and misogyny”. Despite criticism of the film’s violence, The Los Angeles Times was more liberal in their thinking, with their review saying the violence “never seemed to be deliberately sadistic or callous”. Arnie was also largely praised for his performance, and Roger Ebert considered him vital to the movie’s success.
So then, the Austrian Oak’s trip to Mars with its stellar cast and visionary director was a great success and I love the messed up world, mutant prostitutes and all. Naturally, given the success and iconic nature of the movie, a pointless and generic re-imagining, re-make, whatever you want to call it, was released in 2012, and it isn’t great. At all. More importantly, though, what’s YOUR take on the movie? Did Arnie and co. deliver a 90s sci-fi action movie that still holds up well today, or does it belong in an era more fitting of its great but arguably dated VFX and cartoonish violence? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section, and we’ll see you wonderful action fans next time here on Arnie Revisited.
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