4K Ultra HD Film Review

Total Recall (1990) • 4K Ultra HD Collector’s Edition [StudioCanal]

When a man goes for a virtual vacation, memories of the planet Mars push him to go to the planet for real… or does he?

Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” took a long time to reach the screen. Starting life as a screenplay called Total Recall, written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett before their success with Alien (1979), it got stuck in development hell during the 1980s. Ridley Scott, who directed Alien, famously went on to adapt another of the sci-fi author’s tales, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, which resulted in the box office dud Blade Runner (1982). But as that cyberpunk classic started to get reappraised on home video, Total Recall ‘s path to the multiplexes inched along through 40 different drafts.

Dino De Laurentiis wanted to make Total Recall with Richard Dreyfuss () or Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing) as the hero, then David Cronenberg (Videodrome) spent a year helping write a version closer to the source material, intended to star William Hurt…