While many American industries are retrenching in the face of a recession, Hollywood is on a spending spree. The studios are paying unprecedented prices for scripts, stars, directors and other talent required to produce feature films.

The theatrical, video and pay television businesses have exploded abroad, setting off bidding wars among the studios for the handful of talent believed to have the greatest global appeal. Artists involved in action films, which consistently play well worldwide, have seen the most spectacular increases. High Industry Benchmarks

And rates like the following are beginning to serve as benchmarks for the entire industry:

Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $10 million for starring in "Total Recall" and will earn $12 million from Carolco Pictures for "The Terminator II."

*"The Godfather, Part III," which stars Al Pacino, will cost Paramount Pictures at least $55 million.

*The screenwriter Shane Black earned less than $750,000 for "Lethal Weapon," one industry executive said, but he received $1.7 million from Warner Brothers for his latest script, "The Last Boy Scout."

*The screenwriter Joe Esterhaus received $3 million for a screenplay for Carolco Pictures' "Basic Instinct," and Irwin Winkler earned $1 million to produce the film, even though both left the project by mutual agreement shortly after production began.

Though there are myriad reasons behind the rise in fees, many Hollywood executives seem to agree that Carolco Pictures, a small Hollywood studio, is partly responsible. In the last few years, Carolco has carved out a niche making big-budget films with international appeal at a time when foreign markets were growing rapidly. It paid actors like Sylvester Stallone, Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson enormous fees, recouping its investment by selling the films around the world.

Now, other studios have difficulty hiring these actors for substantially less money, even to appear in films in other genres like comedy that do not travel as well abroad.

And once the fees of actors increase, so do those of the other artists working on their films. Technical experts like cameramen and editors can charge more. "It is an industry where everyone looks at what everyone else makes," said Tom Hansen, an entertainment lawyer at Hansen, Jacobson & Teller in Los Angeles. "That creates a type of momentum." Driving Down Profit Margins

The escalation in fees is starting to drive down the profit margins of movies. If the trend continues, companies with deep pockets -- like the Sony Corporation, which bought Columbia Pictures last year, and the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, which has agreed to buy MCA Inc. -- are in the best position to pay for talent. But the fear among some executives in the entertainment business is that those companies might only aggravate the problem because they are capable of overspending and are willing to do so if it gives them a competitive edge.

"We are going in for tougher times in the movie business," said David Londoner, a media analyst at Wertheim Schroder & Company. "The competitive bidding war has thrown everything out of wack."

As one top executive at a major studio put it: "It's like a herd of elephants going down Main Street with each one's trunk hooked into the next one's tail. What they don't know is that the lead elephant is blind and has no idea what he's doing." Changing Hollywood's Economics

Higher costs are indeed changing Hollywood's economics. Last year, production costs for an average film rose 30 percent, to $23.5 million, while advertising costs jumped 10 percent, to $7.8 million.

One industry executive, who insisted on not being named, estimated that production costs have continued to grow this year, but not as strikingly as in 1989, while advertising costs have shot up much more sharply as studios have looked to protect their heavy investments in production.

Peter Dekom, a leading Hollywood lawyer and a partner at Bloom Dekom & Hergott, said he believed that the rates of return for films had already declined this year. And Mr. Londoner said he believed that the average profit margin of studios could fall 20 percent in the next few years, to about 9 percent. Artists Demand Pay Up Front

Eroding profitability has not been lost on actors and producers. Rather than settling for a modest advance and a cut of the profits, more artists have started demanding all of their pay up front -- an arrangement that further diminishes studios' profit potential. "No one is willing to gamble on real profits coming from these movies," said Dale Pollock, president at A& M Films, a production company owned by Polygram. "So most talent wants its money first."

An independent film producer, Lee Rich, said that "when stars get more, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer who earned $6,000 a week two years ago may make close to $12,000 today."

The problem is compounded when studios feel compelled to spend more to promote the films to increase the chances that their investment will pay off. The Walt Disney Company, for example, spent $46 million to make "Dick Tracy" and $54 million to promote it. Historically, studios have spent about one-fourth of their total budget on advertising.