Up Till Now: The Autobiography

to sea in a strong current— just as a thick fog rolled in. Within minutes we were lost in that fog. We couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us—and frighteningly, we couldn’t be seen. We were just outside Los Angeles harbor and there were a lot of large ships moving through the area. I suspect all the actors onboard had a very similar thought: if we get killed which one of us is going to get top billing in the obituaries?
    That picture was so awful it sat on a shelf somewhere for eight years before it was finally broadcast in 1976. No one knows what damage was done to that shelf.
    I’ll tell you how bad it got. I starred in a horror film titled The Devil’s Rain , the story of a man being pursued through the centuries by Satanists. We filmed in Durango, Mexico, and the cast included Ernest Borgnine—who poked out my eyes and crucified me—Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, Keenan Wynn, Ida Lupino, and in his first film appearance, John Travolta.
    The technical advisor on this film was Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. I don’t recall having any conversations with LaVey, although I suppose that is not surprising. What would I have asked him, is this the way Satan holds his fork? I was just so miserable making this film. Durango was such a hellhole, I was vaguely ill from the water, I was homesick, and anxious. But it did include perhaps the greatest chase scene of my career—even more memorable than my chase scene through a car wash in Impulse —although in this case it wasn’t actually in the movie.
    In one scene I was tied to an altar as Ernest Borgnine performed a ritual ceremony over me, preparing me to be sacrificed. I was completely nude except for a piece of ribbon, sort of a breechcloth, covering my groin. Let me state here unequivocally that it is my firm belief that I am the only member of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to have achieved this point in their career. Also in the cast was anubile, barely clothed, beautiful young woman. A photographer from Playboy was on the set shooting pictures. Apparently this actress was to be featured in the magazine and the producers thought this would be good publicity for the film.
    Why I objected to Leonard’s photographer in the dressing room as I put on my makeup and didn’t object to a photographer on the set while I was wearing a ribbon I don’t know. But I didn’t. In this scene my hands and my feet were bound to the altar. As the photographer started shooting, this actress softly laid her hand on my arm and then on my chest and then on my stomach and then on my . . .
    Click. Wait a second! It suddenly occurred to me, Playboy ! I realized exactly what they were doing. “Untie me!” I screamed. The photographer began quickly packing up his cameras. As soon as I got free, for the only time in my life, I went after a photographer. “Give me that roll of film!”
    “No. It’s my film.” I grabbed his arm, trying to get hold of his camera. He was screaming, “Get your hands off me! Get your hands off me!” Give me that film. “Get your hands off me.” We struggled. It was an unusually absurd moment. I was grappling with a photographer who had taken partially nude pictures of me being groped by an almost-naked starlet while being sacrificed by Ernest Borgnine as the founder of the Church of Satan looked on dispassionately.
    Ah, show business.
    I finally managed to yank that roll of film out of his camera and expose it.
    At the end of these films I often died in a unique way. In the big finale of The Devil’s Rain, for example, like the other members of the cast I melted in a rainstorm. In Sole Survivor, CBS’s first made-for-TV movie, and a truly haunting film, I played a ghost trapped in the Libyan desert with the crew of my World War II bomber. At the end of this one I get put in a flag-covered body bag and taken home to rest in peace. I played a psychotic lady-killer in Impulse who gets skewered on a sword by the daughter of the woman I’m romancing. In The Horror at 37,000 Feet I get sucked out of an airplane whilecarrying a lit torch into the plane’s baggage compartment to try to confront a druid ghost.
    Now, there has been considerable discussion among the true Shatner aficionados about precisely which was the worst movie I ever made. And The Horror at 37,000 Feet does have its supporters. This was sort of The Poseidon Adventure meets The Exorcist plot: a small group of potential future Dancing with the Stars