On the eve of the big-budget Sony remake’s opening, it seems like the perfect opportunity to revisit the original 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger smash TOTAL RECALL. Making such a reevaluation easier, New York City’s Film Forum (209 West Houston; [212] 727-8110) begins a special one-week engagement (thanks to a sharp DCP restoration) of the first RECALL from Friday, August 10 through Thursday, August 16, with more cities to follow courtesy rerelease distributor Rialto Pictures.

TOTAL RECALL stands out in my early days in the editorial bullpens at FANGORIA and STARLOG magazines. Both publications featured ample reportage and cover stories on the Paul Verhoeven-directed flick, and our publisher even bought the license to produce an official TOTAL RECALL movie magazine that I contributed to. It didn’t take much for me to justify putting the sci-fi thriller on the cover of FANGORIA (issue #95). The movie sported (literally) eye-popping horror-style FX (courtesy of THE THING’s Rob Bottin), lots of shoot-’em-up violence and it came from the pen of co-writer Dan O’Bannon, of ALIEN and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD fame. That the film turned out to be such rip-roaring fun further validated Fango’s choice.

Derived from the short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick (whose first name is misspelled in the opening credits!), TOTAL RECALL posits a future where human colonies exist on Mars and people can have artificial memories implanted directly into their brains. Despite rolls in the hay with sexy wife Sharon Stone, bored construction worker Douglas Quaid (Arnold) yearns for adventure. So he heads over to the Rekall offices, where he decides to have a two-week Martian spy mission mentally fabricated. But something goes very wrong… It winds up that Quaid really is a Mars-based agent named Hauser who had his memory erased. Before long, vicious hitmen (led by the indefatigable Michael Ironside of SCANNERS) want him erased. So Quaid/Hauser hightails it to Mars to unravel the secret of his identity, confer with local mutant revolutionaries and uncover the nefarious plot of greedy corporate baddie Cohaagen (Ronny Cox, who hasn’t been this loathsomely evil until his recent turn as an elderly serial killer on DEXTER last season).

Fresh off his successful ROBOCOP, Dutchman Verhoeven never lets the pace lag in TOTAL RECALL’s brisk 113 minute running time, nor does he shy away from the kind of bloodshed that sparked the ire of the MPAA. As with Verhoeven’s previous sci-fier, the ratings board slapped TOTAL RECALL with an X and the director had to cut back on the gore to secure an R (the remake wimps out with a PG-13). The film’s visual FX deservedly won an Oscar, while Bottin’s ingeniously tactile animatronics remind you how realistic this kind of magic was before today’s age of largely unconvincing CGI megashows. Though his horribly disfigured mutants and the rebellion leader, Siamese twin Kuato, stand out as Bottin highlights (not to mention a three-breasted hooker), my favorite gag involves Benny the cab driver (Mel Johnson Jr.) unfurling his tentacled arm.

TOTAL RECALL’s biggest special effect is, of course, Schwarzenegger, who equips himself well in the film’s endless fisticuffs, gun battles and hair-raising escapes. The actor delivers his trademark wisecracks (“Consider that a divorce” he says to traitorous wife Stone after shooting her in the head), but such bon mots are, fortunately, kept to a minimum.

The casting of everyman Colin Farrell as the hero in the remake mirrors the original thought process that transpired during the previous film’s lengthy genesis. Before the Austrian bodybuilder signed on, actors like Patrick Swayze, Christopher Reeve, Jeff Bridges, Richard Dreyfuss, William Hurt and Matthew Broderick (!) were considered for Quaid. Among the directors originally engaged was none other than David Cronenberg, who also completed several drafts of the screenplay before exiting the project after disagreements with initial producer Dino DeLaurentiis. TOTAL RECALL’S most Cronenbergian moments would be the kangaroo-pouched Kuato and the superb scene between Quaid and Dr. Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith), who tries to explain away our hero’s misadventures as some kind of Rekall-inspired schizophrenic breakdown (if you listen to the crafty doc’s explanation of future events, the whole movie could indeed be a dream!). If more of TOTAL RECALL had been devoted to similar mind twist conundrums in lieu of the ample gunplay, the film would have been much more extraordinary and critically embraced by the intelligencia.

What’s most revealing about revisiting the first TOTAL RECALL is not the women characters’ big, poufy ’80s hairdos (I kept expecting WORKING GIRL’s Melanie Griffith to show up), but how influential Verhoeven’s movie wound up being on the science-fiction and action films that followed in its wake. The entire MATRIX trilogy seems to have sprung from that memorable Edgemar exchange, while the BOURNE franchise and the Liam Neeson-starrer UNKNOWN also run on an amnesiac spy/killer on the lam, trying to figure out who he is. And I even wonder if the makers of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND watched TOTAL RECALL and inverted its premise, so now its protagonists go to a clinic to have their memories erased instead of inserted. Another TOTAL RECALL distinction: The movie is one of the only films set on Mars that ranks as a certifiable box office blockbuster. MISSION TO MARS, RED PLANET, MARS NEEDS MOMS and the recent turkey JOHN CARTER all emerged as fourth-planet megaflops. Perhaps a little bit of Arnold goes a long way…

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