Barbara VanDenburgh

The Republic | azcentral.com

Arnold Schwarzenegger is never going to win any Oscars. But you'd be hard-pressed to name any living actor who has made as pronounced a pop-cultural impact. We've all quoted him at some point: "I'll be back"; "Hasta la vista, baby"; "It's not a tumor!" And sometimes, in the long run, that means more than any golden statue.

Schwarzenegger, 67, is cashing in on a career's worth of action flicks with "The Expendables 3," but it's good to remember how he got such clout in the first place. Here's a look back at the the Austrian body builder turned California governor's five best film roles.

"Conan the Barbarian" (1982): This isn't a good movie the way that, say, "The Godfather" is a good movie. In fact, it's a barely competent live-action cartoon full of boobs and bulging muscles — which is precisely what makes it the ultimate sword-and-sorcery adventure film in a decade rife with them. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't yet a film star and could barely spit out his English lines through his Austrian accent, but that didn't matter so long as he looked cool wielding a sword. The movie in a nutshell? The scene where a bloodied Conan, crucified to a tree, bites a vulture to death. God bless the '80s.

"The Terminator" (1984), "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991): The first "Terminator" was the film that launched James Cameron's career, and the one that catapulted Schwarzenegger to superstardom. Like "Conan" before it, "Terminator" harnesses Schwarzenegger's skills and ramps them up to 11, casting him as an intimidating physical presence prone to emotionless, monosyllabic pronouncements as he plays a cyborg sent from the future to assassinate the soon-to-be mother of the future leader of the human resistance against the robot uprising. They flipped the script in the close-to-perfect sequel, with a more assured Schwarzenegger playing the good cyborg.

"Predator" (1987): Who at the time would have guessed that two of the commandos battling an alien in the Central American jungle of this superb '80s action flick would go on to be governors? Schwarzenegger went on to govern California, and former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura took on Minnesota, which is impressive and all, but they really shone hefting giant guns and playing a brutal game of cat-and-mouse with a technologically advanced extraterrestrial. You can practically smell the testosterone.

"Total Recall" (1990): Give a Philip K. Dick sci-fi story to director Paul Verhoeven, the guy who made "RoboCop" and "Showgirls," and you don't exactly get a nuanced return. But you do have a lot of fun. Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, a construction worker obsessed with Mars in the year 2084. To get the obsession out of his system, he visits Rekall, a company that will implant the memory of a vacation to Mars in which Quaid will play a secret agent. Is the outlandish story that follows real, or is it the implant? Who knows. But Schwarzenegger pulls a tracking device out of his nose and there's a hooker with three breasts. It's that kind of movie (by which we mean an awesome one).

"True Lies" (1994): Another classic pairing with director James Cameron a decade after "The Terminator" with a much more polished Schwarzenegger resulted in a box-office blockbuster and the perfect summer popcorn film. Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, a mild-mannered family man and computer salesman. Well, at least that's what his family thinks — he's really a covert agent in a counter-terrorism task force. The double life makes for fabulous fun, especially after Tasker's wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) gets pulled into the plot — and not just because of her killer strip-tease sequence.

Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/babsvan.