Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Total Recall" (1990). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

The 1990 action blockbuster "Total Recall" was one of many Hollywood productions that utilized the late science fiction author Philip K. Dick's short stories and novels, to the point, as Hollywood is renown for exploiting an idea and reworking to appease to an audience, that many film production companies eyed Dick's 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", to be their next major production.   Yet, the story, renamed by scriptwriter Ronald Shusett, who also owned the adaptation rights, changed Dick's 1966 title to Total Recall.  And it would stand as one of the most rewritten, limbo esque productions of the 1970s and1980s.   With the late Dan O'bannon, who co wrote "Alien" with Shusett, was asked to begin writing his First draft of the Total Recall script, in trying to align the story as closely to Dick's version.  Who had his script rewritten, with a plethora of rewrites of the original script by O'bannon over the decade that followed, and even in 1984, five years before Total Recall went into production, by the Canadian horror director David Cronenberg, who was asked by the late Dino de Laurentiis to direct.  To which Cronenberg agreed, but wanted to further connect Dick's original story to the production, thus removing the vision the now bankrupt production company De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and Shusett had as an action blockbuster, rather than a philosophical, Cronenberg science fiction drama.

The "Total Recall" pre-production woes continued, in the last years of 1980s, set design company DEG filed for bankruptcy and so did De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, with many lead actors who were considered for the role not satisfied with the script rewrites, as did the amount of Directors brought on board, including Cronenberg, with many attempts at redrafting the script, and hence dropping out of the project one by one, when their wishes did not materialize.  Until Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, fresh from the success of the uber-violent 1987 "Robocop", was asked to direct Total Recall by the emerging powerhouse action star Arnold Swarchenegger, who also convinced Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar of "Carolco Pictures" to acquire the Total Recall pre-production, and turn it into a major Hollywood action flick, to which Carolco Pictures was renown for throughout the 1980s, agreed and took over the production.

And after 40 rewrites of the original 1981 script by Dan O'bannon and Ronald Shusett, "Total Recall" went into production in 1989 with Arnold Schwarzenegger staring in the lead role as "Dennis Quaid", who had his memory erased, placed on Earth with a wife, with an inherent desire to visit Mars, thus begins the theme of identity, memory and what is real and what's not, slightly correlating with Dick's postmodern science fiction prose of hyperrealities and unreality fusing, with the ruminating question of; are my dreams real?  Paul Verhoeven, who has a subtle and not so subtle critique of the Hollywood corporation mentally with its American blockbuster movies, ensured that Total Recall was filled with enough controversial scenes of violence and gore, utilizing Verhoeven's cleverly devised paradoxes of what violence means to American audiences.   

"Total Recall" became one of the highest grossing films when it was released in 1990, particularly significant as it was classified as a R rating, with many of the violent sequences were cut out of the film in post production, as the censors at the time actually gave Total Recall an X-Rating.  And 35 years later, Total Recall holds up as quintessential action flick of the early 1990s, with its cult movie status in tact, even with the original script tried to connect the seriousness of Philip K. Dick questioning what is real and what is not, into a comic book stylization, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's trademark one liners that we all know of as fans of the actor.  The film, under Verhoeven offers a gritty,1970s style dystopia, with the slickness of a future, colorlessly toned down into its Fascist simplicity, despite the grandeur of the sets and special effects.  Verhoeven's oppressively future feels mundane and repetitive, confronting themes about oppression, greed, and the frailty of the human mind, and our desire to escape from reality and of ourselves.  Was Dennis Quaid dreaming the whole time?   

Some Trivia.  The details of the mutants, and their deformities on Mars actually came from David Cronenberg's script rewrites, as an idea that the Mars colony inhabitants would mostly be mutated.     

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema