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Total Recall is set in the year 2084, in a society ruled by two opposing government factions. Mars, which has already been colonized, suffers political unrest. A construction worker on Earth, Dough Quaid (Arnold), is haunted in his dreams by real-seeming memories of a past life on Mars - yet to his knowledge he has never been to the planet. The dreams intensify and Quaid's grasp of reality begins to crumble; the line between the real and the unreal becomes increasingly blurred, until Quaid realizes that everything he thinks he knows and has experienced may well be a fabrication. His mental state worries his beautiful wife, Lori (Sharon Stone), and deteriorates further when he visits Rekall, Inc., a travel service specializing in implanting artificial "memories" of fantasy adventures in the minds of its customers. Obsessed with Mars, Quaid signs up for a fabricated adventure on the planet but the procedure goes haywire. In the process, a separate, long-suppressed facet of Quaid's personality comes to the fore.

Quaid quickly realizes that his dreams have a basis in truth. He also discovers that he is under surveillance, and that the people who are following him are worried about what he may remember. They want him dead, so Quaid flees to Mars. There, he antagonizes Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), the colony's ruthless dictator, and meets a beautiful guerilla fighter named Melina (Rachel Ticotin). Quaid learns that his loving wife Lori isn't his wife at all, but a deadly agent; his memories of their courtship and wedding day have been artificially implanted in his brain. Even more intriguing is Quaid's discovery that, under the name Hauser, he was once a spy in the employ of Cohaagen. Now, the dictator sees Quaid as a dangerous liability, and enlists the fanatical intelligence agent Richter (Michael Ironside) to eliminate him.

A wisecracking black cab driver (Mel Johnson, Jr.) pretends to be of service to Quaid, but turns out to be a mutant who follows his passenger to the hiding place of George (Marshall Bell), the enigmatic rebel commander, who's also a mutant. Although the rebel hideout is destroyed by Cohaagen's men, Quaid and Melina get the last laugh when they propel Cohaagen into the nearly airless void outside the colony, and destroy the nuclear reactor that limits the colony's supply of oxygen. The once miserable inhabitants of Mars can finally - and literally - breathe freely.

Total Recnll was based on a short story by noted science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick. The film was far and away Arnold's most provocative and complex to date. Budgeted at $50 million (some sources quoted even higher figures), the picture opened to smash box office numbers and good reviews. Critics and general audiences responded positively to the film's exhilarating mix of sci-fi, violent action, dazzling special effects, and the haunting psychological mystery that is at the core of the story.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, a Dutch director best known for Robocop, the picture manifested layers of meaning beyond the slam-bang entertainment that Arnold was expected to deliver. The star himself was paid $11 million for his participation, plus 15 percent of the profits, an enormous salary by any standard. Yet when the box-office gross of Total Recall passed the $110 million mark, Schwarzenegger proved to be worth every penny.

According to Verhoeven, quoted in Movies USA, Total Recall "is about identity - it's a Kafkaesque nightmare about a mind being stolen. That's a modern psychosis." Arnold agrees. "It's a wild mind trip," he told Movies USA. He felt he was taking part in a unique enterprise. "When I first read the script," he remarked to Starlog, "during the days when I was doing Commando, it just stayed with me ... I could not put it down.

"This is something people have not seen me in", the actor continued. "It's not a leap in the other direction the way Twins was", he conceded, but it offered a challenge in terms of the ambitious subject matter, as well as the chance to do what amounted to a dual role.

It is a challenge,"Schwarzenegger stressed in the Starlog interview, "because you're not coming in with the same character that you're going out with. Hauser's an interesting character, but Quaid's just this big program. ..."

In the movie, Arnold has a pretty elaborate love scene with Sharon Stone, who takes the part of the agent who masquerades as Quaid's loving wife. By this point in his career, the actor had developed a technique as to how to deal with such potentially awkward scenes. He told Movies USA, "I talk to the girl; you talk about being half-naked in bed. You get the inhibitions out of the way in rehearsal."

Arnold did not shy away from the moment in Total Recall when Quaid does away with his "wife". Caught suddenly in a kill-or-be-killed situation, Quaid shoots Lori dead. It's a grim moment that's lightened somewhat by a bit of Schwarzenegger-style humor. "But I'm your wife", Lori pleads. Quaid pulls the trigger, then regards the corpse. "Consider that a divorce", he says.

"Humor during scenes of violence", Verhoeven told USA Today, "takes the reality away a bit and protects the audience. Arnie's line before or after these scenes brings the realism to a different level. Without the humor, it may be too strong."

On the set, in Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, Arnold injected a similar cheerfulness. "He comes on the set and everyone is happier," Rachel Ticotin told Marquee. "I see it as a responsibility," Arnold admitted to the same magazine. "But I don't make any effort. I'm a naturally happy guy".

Still, Total Recall is rough, tough entertainment. It's interesting to note that Verhoeven and the special effects crew actually made an effort to see that the film wasn't too intense. For instance, the mutants who populate Mars are startling in appearance, but not so grotesque as to shock the audience. Similarly, care was taken to see that the nightmarish quality of the story and the film's vision of the future were not excessively depressing and dark. The filmmakers wanted to disturb a little and entertain a lot. They succeeded on both counts, and in grand style.