Doug Quaid, a construction worker in 2084, is plagued by nightmares of adventures on Mars with a mysterious woman named Melina. When he suggests to his wife Lori that they should vacation on the colonized planet, she disagrees and suggests Saturn instead. Doug then sees an ad for ReKall, a company that can implant memories in people's minds, allowing them to experience events that never happened. He decides to have a memory implanted of himself as a secret agent on a trip to Mars. However, during the implantation process, something goes wrong. Doug discovers that his real identity is Hauser, a government assassin who has already been on Mars. The memories he wants to have implanted are actually his past memories, making the implantation impossible. Special forces are sent to capture him. His only option is to go to Mars and live out his wildest fantasy, possibly for the second time.


Books with substantial mentioning of Total Recall

Jason P. Vest
Future Imperfect, Philip K. Dick at the Movies
Westport, Connecticut, London, 2007

Frank N. Magill (ed.)
Magill's Cinema Annual 1991, A Survey of the Films of 1990
Pasadena, California; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991

Articles on Total Recall

Zofia Kolbuszewska, From Philip K. Dick's Dystopian World to Hollywood Utopian Vision: "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Wunderkammer, Memory and Total Recall, in: Artur Blaim, Ludmila Gruszewska-Blaim (eds.), Mediated utopias, Frankfort am Main; New York, 2015

Adam Smith, Triple Dutch, in: Empire, nr. 278 (August), 2012 pp. 98-113

Reviews

Patrick Seyboth, Mars revisited, in: epd Film, nr. 9, 2012 pp. 62 (DVD review)