Arnie and Sharon Stone's trip to Mars: The ultra-violent saga of Total Recall

Telegraph

02-06-2025

Thirty-five years since Total Recall landed in cinemas, screenwriter Gary Goldman has a memory of director Paul Verhoeven pulling out a huge box. 'Paul scared me!' Goldman says, remembering the writing task that lay ahead.
The contents of that box – a pile of scripts – represented Total Recall's agonising, stop-start journey. It was the summation of everything that kept the film – based on Philip K Dick's 1966 story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale – at various levels of development hell for 15 years. Multiple writers and directors had produced some 40 drafts, which included – most curious of all – a David Cronenberg version that would have starred Richard Dreyfuss and a pack of sewer-dwelling mutant camels.
Total Recall had done the rounds so often that it came on Goldman's writer-for-hire radar on three occasions. Now his job was to crack what no previous writer could: a satisfying conclusion. 'Paul gave me six or seven drafts and showed me the things he liked in them,' says Goldman.
But Verhoeven and Goldman had a not-so-secret weapon, a name that would become a byword for cinema's, bicep-bulging, bankable brand of action – Schwarzenegger.
The Austrian superstar – whose muscles were matched by a sharp mind for box office and marketing – had pursued the Total Recall script as determinedly as his T-800 Terminator once pursued Sarah Connor. Arnold Schwarzenegger saved the Total Recall script from bankruptcy, and the film was retooled specifically for him.
But Total Recall isn't just any old Schwarzenegger vehicle. Total Recall is the ultimate Schwarzenegger film: a near-future, off-world fantasy that cranks up all the Arnie-isms to a hyper degree. It's all there – everything that was specific to Schwarzenegger's appeal at that time – in the fabric of Total Recall's not-quite-a-dream, not-quite-reality. The gruesome violence and bad language. The knack for dispatching villains with creative panache and a quip (' Screw you! ' he shouts as he runs one chap through with a giant drill). Also, the weirdly recurring idea of Arnold's dual identities and – continuing from The Terminator – the sense that he's somehow more than human, as rendered by Total Recall's Oscar-winning special effects.
See Arnold emerging from beneath the gurning visage of a 'fat lady' disguise; yanking a golf ball-sized bug from his lively nostrils; and – the film's best remembered scene – choking on the surface of Mars, eyeballs being sucked out.
Schwarzenegger plays Doug Quaid, a construction worker who dreams about going to Mars. To satisfy his urge, he visits tech company Rekall and has an 'ego trip' implanted – an artificial memory of being a secret agent on Mars, where he saves the planet and bags the brunette of his literal dreams, Melina (Rachel Ticotin).
But the procedure uncovers a suppressed memory. He really was a secret agent on Mars, his real identity has been erased, and his beautiful-but-deadly wife (Sharon Stone) isn't his wife at all. To find out who he really is, Quaid goes to Mars and joins a mutant rebellion against Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), the oxygen-hogging Mars governor.
Producer and writer Ronald Shusett first optioned Philip K Dick's short story back in 1974 for $1,000. 'I knew it would be an incredible movie,' Shusett later said. 'An incredibly expensive movie.' Shusett began writing with Dan O'Bannon (the same duo also created Alien) but they ran out of story to adapt by page 30.
In Dick's version, the character never makes it to Mars. The story ends with an abrupt punchline about an invasion of alien field mice. For Shusett and O'Bannon, the question was where to take the character next. O'Bannon suggested a solution (though an ultimately expensive one): 'We take him to Mars.'
Shusett tried to develop the film with Disney before Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis picked up the rights. David Cronenberg then developed his version under De Laurentiis and Shusett. Beginning in 1984, Cronenberg produced 12 script drafts over a year. By that point Total Recall was already notorious as one of the great unmade scripts. 'The thing that would not die,' said Cronenberg, though he had to concede 'because it had a terrific premise.'
Cronenberg went to De Laurentiis's studio in Rome to prep the film with Richard Dreyfuss in the lead – Cronenberg actually wanted William Hurt – but the director clashed with Shusett and walked away. 'You know what you've done?' said Shusett about Cronenberg's serious, more intellectually probing script. 'You've done the Philip K Dick version.'
'Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?' replied Cronenberg.
'No, no,' said Shusett. 'We want to do Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars.'
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger was tracking the project but De Laurentiis – who executive produced Arnold's Conan films – didn't see Arnold in the role.
Total Recall came close to production again in 1987, this time in Australia with Driving Miss Daisy director Bruce Beresford and Patrick Swayze. This version, said Shusett, was more 'Spielberg-ish'. But just 60 days before production was set to begin, De Laurentiis's company filed for bankruptcy. Beresford called Shusett with the bad news. The director watched his sets being torn down as they spoke.
Seeing the bankruptcy news, Schwarzenegger called Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, the executive producers at Carolco Pictures. Carolco, an independent studio, was known for spending big money and giving film-makers relative freedom. Carolco had hit big with Sly Stallone in Rambo and with Schwarzenegger in their stable – the next big thing in action –– they snapped up Total Recall for a reported $3-5 million.
Mario Kassar laughs looking back at the deal. De Laurentiis, ever the salesman, had upsold them to include his already-paid-for production materials. 'Dino said, 'I've made all these special effects,'' remembers Kassar. ''I'll give you all the effects [for an increased cost]. It was a box of toys! Train and car miniatures... a few little Dinky toys! It was all part of his salesman speech.'
With the script secured, Schwarzenegger enlisted Verhoeven. The pair previously met at an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. Schwarzenegger went over to tell Verhoeven how much he had enjoyed RoboCop, which opened in 1987, and they made a loose, gentlemanly agreement to find a project together in the future. Schwarzenegger called Verhoeven a few months later. 'I have the project,' he said.
Verhoeven was sold on one particular scene, in which Dr Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith) comes to Quaid and explains – quite convincingly – that his adventure is just a delusion, the exact secret agent fantasy that Quaid purchased at Rekall. Edgemar, who claims to be a safeguard within the artificial reality, offers Quaid a red pill to return to the real world (a decade before The Matrix handed out reality-awakening red pills). But when a bead of sweat dribbles down Edgemar's brow – proof (or is it?) that he's real after all and one of Cohaagen's goons – Quaid shoots him dead.
It's the point of no return for Quaid. It was also the point at which every previous script draft had fallen apart. 'There were no more twists and turns,' remembers Gary Goldman. 'My goal was, let's keep this smart and surprising, if possible, all the way to the end.'
Verhoeven also insisted that they keep the film ambiguous. Is Quaid's adventure real? Or is it just the Rekall-induced dream? There are details throughout that suggest it could just be the fantasy. Edgemar, for instance, plainly spells out the final act.
'We figured out ways to do it – to keep it on this razor's edge,' adds Goldman. 'Ultimately, we decided to make it work both ways, so there's no definitive answer that it's one or the other.'
Total Recall was filmed in Mexico City and made use of the suitably futuristic architecture. The Mars colony – an alien mine-turned-industrial estate–turned sleazy red-light district – was constructed across nine soundstages at Churubusco studios.
For Goldman, another challenge was to make Total Recall a Schwarzenegger film, and to get around the inherent ridiculousness of Arnie – with his distinctive accent and Mr Universe-winning physique – playing an agent in deep cover. (See also: the least inconspicuous undercover cop/kindergarten teacher of all time.) In Philip K Dick's original story, the character was a meek office worker – 'a miserable little salaried employee'.
The Arnie version of Total Recall required lashings of Arnie-sized violence: skewering someone through the head with a steel bar; slicing off Michael Ironside's arms in a nasty elevator mishap; using an innocent bystander as a pulpy flesh-shield during a shootout. The violence – way more extreme than most modern action films would have the guts to serve up – was carefully scripted to deliver creative kills.
Indeed, ultra-violence was one unifying factor in what feels, on the surface, like a melding of The Terminator and RoboCop – the T-800 storming through a RoboCop-like world of dark science-fiction, sleaze, and smirking satire (the commercials for Rekall easily sit alongside RoboCop's news bulletins). Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven were a perfect pairing for the moment. Arnold was blowing away bad guys and snapping necks all over the place. Meanwhile, Verhoeven's sense of obscenity, sleaze, and knowing silliness manifests as one of Total Recall's most enduring images, the triple-breasted mutant hooker (Lycia Naff), a character so deeply ingrained in the film's memory that she was updated for the (ironically forgettable) 2012 remake starring Colin Farrell.
Mel Johnson Jr, who plays Benny, a mantis-armed mutant cabbie with five kids to feed, recalls being accosted by a gang of teenagers after the film was released. After asking him some rudimentary questions, one of them blurted out, 'Were the three breasts real?!'
'You just knew that's the question they really wanted to ask!' Johnson says, laughing.
Johnson had actually auditioned for a Sylvester Stallone film before Total Recall. 'It was just horrible, the character was so stereotypical black,' he says. He read the Total Recall script the very next day and remembers that Benny was described as a 'jivester', which read like another blatant stereotype. 'I just took the script and threw it across the room,' he says. 'I was fed up.' Johnson gave Benny another chance and was hooked by the twist: Benny is an undercover villain and tries to squish Quaid and Melina with a mole drilling contraption.
Selected for the role by Verhoeven's daughters, Johnson killed time on set by learning to drive Benny's double steering-wheeled taxi. He became so adept behind the wheels that he had to take over from the stunt driver and take a tricky corner at high speed. When Schwarzenegger's double went to sit in the back, Arnie stopped him. 'Arnold goes [adopting a Schwarzenegger accent], 'Oh no, if Mel is driving the car, I'm getting in the car, too,'' recalls Johnson. 'Everyone was going, 'Oh Jesus, what if he crashes the car?!'' Arnold, says Johnson, was 'witty, funny, no muss-no fuss, no entourage, none of that stuff.'
Johnson also remembers the film's most impressive special effects creation: Kuato, a parasitic twin that emerges from the stomach of its big brother (Marshall Bell). Looking like a hideous-but-nonetheless-wizened baby, Kuato imparts psychic advice.
The effect was created by putting Marshall Bell in a body prosthetic, alongside other shots of an animatronic recreation of the actor. 'Rob Bottin had to build an entire robot,' says Johnson. 'Paul didn't want it, he said it would look fake. So, Rob built it, shot a scene, and showed it to Paul. Paul was furious and said to Marshall Bell, 'When did you shoot this without me?!' Marshall said, 'I didn't do it!' Paul realised it was a robot and he couldn't tell the difference!'
Between the mutants, fake Arnie heads, and the recreation of Mars, Total Recall is one of the great last gasps of pure practical effects, though it features some early CGI, as Quaid walks through an X-ray machine and we see his full skeleton.
Filmed over six months, Total Recall was an immense production – one of the most expensive films ever at the time. The actual budget was never confirmed though. Mario Kassar puts the budget around the $30-$40 million mark, though reports at the time said $60 million. Verhoeven guessed $50 million.
'It went a little bit over, like every movie,' says Kassar. 'We went to Mexico to try and save as much money as possible. You're in the hands of your director. There's not a week that you don't argue about the budget with Paul. He's such a creative talent, he's not thinking about numbers, he's thinking about the movie… I've never heard of a director who wants less!'
According to Goldman, Schwarzenegger used his star power to champion their vision – no matter how expensive it was – and when Carolco wanted to send Ronald Shusett home, because Shusett argued against budget cuts, Schwarzenegger stood up for him. 'He said, 'If you send Ron home, I'm going too!'' says Goldman.
Thirty-five years on, Kassar gives Shusett, who died in 2024, his due credit. 'Without Ron there would be no Total Recall,' Kassar says. 'He was also a very opinionated man. But he came up with the idea. You've got to give him credit.'
Mel Johnson Jr witnessed Schwarzenegger flex some backstage muscle during a publicity meeting with marketing executives. 'It was obvious to me that these execs were patronising him a little, as if he didn't know about marketing,' says Johnson.
Arnold chomped on a cigar as the suits made vague PR promises – 'We're gonna do this and that for you,' Johnson remembers them saying – but Arnold stopped them and calmly reeled off a list of actors and all the magazine covers they got to publicise films. 'Now, are you getting those for me? Are those things happening?' Arnold said.
'The whole room changed,' says Johnson. 'He was on his game. He didn't raise his voice, didn't do it angrily. He just said these are the facts and I know the facts, so don't talk to me like I don't know what's going on. I had great respect for him.'
Elsewhere, Schwarzenegger was a gregarious prankster. When the crew held a fancy dinner to mark the midpoint of the shoot – an 'almost halfway there' party – Schwarzenegger arranged for baskets of Styrofoam balls to be delivered. The dinner erupted into a Styrofoam snowball fight.
'The crew was throwing them at their crew chiefs, the actors were throwing them at Paul,' says Johnson. 'When we exhausted it, we were all just hysterically laughing. It was the biggest release and coming together. That was all Arnold.'
Yet Total Recall might not have hit its eventual $260 million box office without that ever-elusive satisfying conclusion. To fix the longstanding problem, Goldman proposed an inspired twist: in chasing down his past and true identity, Quaid discovers that his old self – Carl Hauser – was, in fact, in cahoots with Cohaagen and wants his identity restored.
The real man, the film's MacGuffin, is a villain; the fake identity – an artificial construction – comes out of it as the hero.
'It's the good Arnold having to give his body back to the bad Arnold,' says Goldman.
Total Recall opened on June 1, 1990. Schwarzenegger's films had grossed $1 billion in the Eighties, but Total Recall was his biggest box office film to date. The following year, Terminator 2 – another Carolco production and an even bigger hit – solidified him as a cultural juggernaut.
The question of whether it's all a dream or reality still works – 'The answer to that question,' says Mel Johnson Jr, 'is however you feel about it' – but real or not, Total Recall is as strong as peak Schwarzenegger gets.