Arnold Schwarzenegger Nearly Starred In A Wrestling Body Horror Movie That Sounds Awesome

The year was 1987, and Arnold Schwarzenegger had just starred in John McTiernan's "Predator," a film about violent mercenaries being hunted by a vicious creature from space. That same year, horror luminary Stuart Gordon, already well-known among horror fans for "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond," just completed his third feature, the killer toy movie "Dolls." And, in a parallel universe, they both might have moved on to a notable horror project together shortly thereafter. 

Back in 2016, horror filmmaker Joe Begos was interviewed on the podcast "Shock Waves," and Begos recalled his days working as a script-reader for Stuart Gordon, sometime in the late 1980s, and the various projects that passed through Gordon's offices. It seemed that Schwarzenegger really wanted to work with Gordon after seeing "Re-Animator" back in 1985. There was even a brief period when Schwarzenegger was interested in playing the lead role in Gordon's sci-fi prison movie "Fortress," released in 1992. Christopher Lambert ended up taking the lead in "Fortress," but it feels very much like something Schwarzenegger would have made at the time. Pairing Schwarzenegger with Stuart Gordon is not out of the realm of possibility.

But it seems that Gordon and Schwarzenegger were circling a twisted horror film about a bodybuilder called "Steroid." The premise was pretty wild: a professional wrestler, obsessed with his physique, begins taking steroids to bulk up his body. There is something wrong with the drugs, however, and the wrestler goes mad from the chemicals. Evidently, the film was to end with Arnold Schwarzenegger, transformed into a monster, murdering a bunch of people in the streets of New York. Sadly, the film was never made. 

Begos noted that, in the late 1980s, "Steroid" seemed plausible, and even felt like it was about to move forward. In his words: 

"They were supposed to make this awesome movie together called. 'Steroid.' [...] I was working for Stuart when the whole Chris Benoit thing happened, and we talked about how shocking that was. And he told me he was supposed to do a story like that in the '80s with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He flipped through his filing cabinet and pulled out a script called 'Steroid.' He said in it, Schwarzenegger plays a wrestler that's addicted to steroids, and he ends up going crazy and going on a murder spree through New York City. And I'm thinking holy s***!"

Chris Benoit, for those unfamiliar with the story, was a professional wrestler who, in 2007, murdered his wife, Nancy, and his seven-year-old son, Daniel. He then hung himself. The details of the case are perhaps too gruesome to report on casually here (there is an episode of "Dark Side of the Ring" dedicated to it), but it was posited that a lifetime of being beaten in the head in the wrestling ring, paired with incessant steroid use, moved Benoit into an unstable headspace. And to think that Stuart Gorton had written a script about a similar phenomenon 20 years prior. "Steroid" was said to be produced by Full Moon Entertainment mogul Charles Band, and released with the title "Berserker" (not to be confused with Jefferson Richard's 1987 horror movie of the same name).

Sadly, that seems to be where the project ended. No further movement was made, and both Schwarzenegger and Gordon moved on to other things. The two never actually worked together. 

Why did "Steroid"/"Berserker" fall apart? It seems that, at that point in his career, Arnold only wanted to play heroes and good guys. He frequently played heroes who violently kill their enemies, but he only ever played a proper villain in James Cameron's "The Terminator" in 1984. The idea of playing a drug-crazed murderer, it seems, was more than the actor could bear. This was all according to a report in ScreenRant. Gordon evidently tried to convince Schwarzenegger that his character would have a heroic side, but Schwarzenegger passed on it anyway. 

Indeed, Schwarzenegger didn't appear in too many horror films throughout his career. While there are horror elements to his films "The Terminator," "Predator," and even "Conan the Barbarian," Schwarzenegger wouldn't appear in a proper horror film until 1999's "End of Days," a Satanic thriller that no one likes. He would later appear in a tragic zombie drama called "Maggie" in 2015, but that was it for Arnold and horror. Gordon, meanwhile, made mostly genre films throughout his career, although his final few films were crime movies and thrillers. His last film, released in 2007, was called "Stuck," and was about a homeless man who was stuck in the windshield of a young woman's car. She doesn't try to unstick him, and he lives in her garage for an extended period. 

Gordon passed away in 2020 at the age of 72. Schwarzenegger, 78, still acts occasionally, but his output has shrunk in the last few years.