was also a kind of vacation for me in a bad time—a nice location in Arizona—and I picked up a few thousand bucks. After it came out, a few people wagged their fingers at me—'Oh-ho-ho, you dirty dog'—but I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. They shot all the sex stuff after I'd flown back to L.A. I won the adult film Oscar for that, by the way, but somebody copped it. In 1981, Ray told a newspaper that his drinking was "under control" and said, "I think things are going to shoot straight up. I'm working on a deal now and if the picture is made my worries... are over... If things go the way I anticipate and I stay healthy I think I've got better years ahead of me than behind me." He said he was open to a return to politics "if my movie career doesn't take off like I think it will." He admitted being unhappy with his career, saying: "I think I should have gotten more good stuff." His career decline accelerated in the 1980s, and after being diagnosed with throat cancer, he accepted virtually any role that came his way to maintain his costly health insurance. He returned to Crockett in 1983. Though at this stage in his career Ray starred mostly in low-budget and exploitation films, he did appear in occasional higher-profile works. He provided voice-over work as Sullivan for the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH alongside fellow character actor John Carradine. Ray was originally cast in the role of Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune, as his ex-wife Johanna Ray was the casting director, but was replaced by Patrick Stewart owing to ongoing issues with alcoholism. During the last stages of his career, Ray made a number of films for Fred Olen Ray. "He'd give me $1,000 in cash, pay my expenses, and I'd do a day's work", said Ray. "Somebody showed me one of his cassettes—'starring Aldo Ray'—but it was just a one-day job... I needed money at the time, and Fred knew I needed a buck, so I did it. He exploited me, yeah... but I was ripe for it." He also appeared in two films for Iranian-born filmmaker Amir Shervan, better known for his cult classic Samurai Cop. Final years and death In 1986 Ray's SAG membership was revoked when it