Worst SFX No.13: Total Recall (1990)

Martin Anderson

Published on Jan 6, 2009

I'm a big fan of this film and of Rob Bottin, who created the hugely inventive prosthetic effects for it, and some of the problems with this shot are more concerned with the conception than the execution. When Schwarzenegger's 'fat woman' disguise goes on the fritz, the 'eject' routine for the mask seems to prove beyond doubt that the Governator is brainless - where the hell was there room in the cranial space for that absurd gismo to emerge from? More problematic is that the spectacular split of the head itself involved so many internal workings that it wasn't possible to fit Arnie himself underneath it, and by the time the head has 'reformed', it's clear that a rubber Arnie was hiding in there, rather than the real thing…