Three Kings, Ace High: A Rare Look at the Palmed Hands of TV High Rollers from the '70s to the '90s

Steven Bochco, a ten-time Emmy Award-winning television series creator-writer-producer, died of complications from leukemia on April 1, 2018. He had been initially diagnosed with leukemia in 2014 and received a bone marrow transplant that year. Among several other accolades, Bochco garnered four Peabody Awards over a career that saw him develop such popular programs as "Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law," and "NYPD Blue."

In a way, Steven Bochco was part of a trinity of gifted writers-story editors-series creators-executive producers that included Stephen J. Cannell and David E. Kelley, who dominated series television from the early 1970s up to present day. Looming over them like a prime-time godfather was Aaron Spelling, who, from the mid-1960s to his death in 2006, through his various, self-named production companies, held the record as the most prolific writer-producer in U.S. history, with over 215 producer-executive producer credits.

Three aces and a king: Aaron Spelling sits behind a stacked deck
of Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, and David E. Kelley.
(photo illustration by David Steinlicht)

Aaron Spelling's prodigious list of successful series included "The Rookies," "S.W.A.T.", "Starsky and Hutch," "Charlie's Angels," "Fantasy Island," "Hart to Hart," "The Love Boat," "Dynasty," "Melrose Place," "Beverly Hills 90210," "7th Heaven," and "Charmed."

In 1954, Spelling sold his first script to "Jane Wyman Present ," an anthology series that also featured teleplays by Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Blake Edwards, and Gene Roddenberry. Within a couple years, Spelling accumulated credits as a writer and producer on the western anthology series "Zane Grey Theatre." He subsequently formed a production company with entertainer Danny Thomas. Their first venture was 1967's "Rango" (pictured below), a western sitcom tailored to popularize on comedian Tim Conway's portrayal of bumbling Ensign Parker on the World War II sitcom "McHale's Navy" by casting him as a bumbling Texas Ranger. The series lasted one season. Thomas-Spelling Productions found better success with the series "The Guns of Will Sonnett" and "The Mod Squad."

Frankie Laine ("Rawhide," "Blazing Saddles")
belted out the theme song to the series "Rango."

Screen veteran Walter Brennan and newcomer Dack Rambo starred
as grandfather and grandson in "The Guns of Will Sonnett," which
frequently utilized Walter's catchphrase: "No brag, just fact."

Aaron Spelling (right) visits the set of "The Mod Squad" and
chats with costars Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole.

Danny Thomas, incidentally, co-produced other television series, in collaboration with actor Sheldon Leonard. A word or two about Leonard here. As an actor, he might be most familiar as Nick the wise-cracking bartender in "It's a Wonderful Life" ("Out you two pixies go, through the door or out the window!"), but he was equally known - with his clipped New York dialect, usually spoken out of the corner of his mouth - for a string of underworld roles, usually as colorful Damon Runyonesque gangsters with names like Lefty, Jumbo, or Harry the Horse.

Typically, a cigar instead of a cigarette was a more
befitting prop for Sheldon Leonard as a tough guy.

T&L Productions - as in Thomas and Leonard - were responsible for "Make Room for Daddy" (later called "The Danny Thomas Show"), "The Andy Griffith Show" (which was a spin-off of "The Danny Thomas Show"), and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." In a classic 1963 episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," Sheldon Leonard spoofed his screen image as the thuggish Big Max Calvada, whose sister is pressuring him to coerce comedy writers Rob, Sally, and Buddy into writing a surefire standup routine for his no-talent nephew. (Character actor Arthur Batanides, best known as Old Man Kirkland in the "Police Academy" pictures, steals scenes as Max's deadpan goon who utters more than once, "The kid breaks me up.")

The dapper but dangerous Big Max Calvada (Sheldon Leonard)
makes his entrance in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," accompanied
by his stone-faced muscle, Bernard (Arthur Batanides).

After parting with Danny Thomas, Leonard became involved in producing "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." and "I Spy."

The point being, even before the dynasty of Aaron Spelling, the history of series television involved domineering presences, like a Sheldon Leonard and a Danny Thomas, or a Quinn Martin. An unassuming gentleman in horn-rimmed glasses, Quinn Martin had at least one series airing in prime time every year from 1959 to 1980.

By the mid-1950s, Martin was an executive producer for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's Desilu Studios (more on that production powerhouse in a bit). It didn't hurt that Martin's first wife, Madelyn Pugh, along with her writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr., contributed to the teleplays for all 180 episodes of "I Love Lucy."

The first collaboration between Quinn Martin and Desilu Productions was the action-packed crime drama "The Untouchables," starring Robert Stack as T-man Eliot Ness and running from 1959 to 1963. Quinn Martin Productions was ushered in with the immensely popular "The Fugitive," in 1963.

Quinn Martin reads a script for "The Fugitive"
over the shoulder of series star David Janssen.

Most Quinn Martin productions were law enforcement-centered, including "The F.B.I." in 1965, featuring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., 1970's "Dan August," with Burt Reynolds as a homicide detective, "Cannon" in 1971, starring William Conrad as a private investigator, "The Streets of San Francisco," which aired from 1972 to 1977, teaming Karl Malden and Michael Douglas as homicide cops, and "Barnaby Jones," with Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father-and-daughter-in-law private detectives, running for over seven seasons from 1973.

As the name implies, Desilu Productions was founded and co-owned by husband and wife entertainers Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Desilu was the second largest independent production company in the U.S. until 1962, at which time #1 MCA bought Universal Studios, and Desilu stood alone at the top.

Arnaz and Ball jointly owned the major share of their self-named enterprise up to 1962, two years after their divorce, when Lucy bought out Desi. Alone as president and CEO, Ball became the first woman to run a major studio and one of the most powerful women in Hollywood.

Under Ball's leadership, Desilu resurrected "Star Trek" after the show was nearly canceled following  a disappointing pilot episode. Desilu subsequently brought "Mission: Impossible" and "Mannix" to television. In 1967, Ball sold her shares of Desilu Productions to Gulf+Western for a tidy $17 million (over $126 million in today's dollars).

Looks like a paparazzo caught MTM executives Grant Tinker
and Mary Tyler Moore at an uncomfortable moment.

Another influential woman in television production, Mary Tyler Moore, formed MTM Enterprises with then-husband Grant Tinker in 1969 primarily to produce her upcoming sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," followed by "The Bob Newhart Show," "WKRP in Cincinnati," "Rhoda," "Phyllis," and "Newhart." Tinker left the company in 1981, coinciding with his divorce from Moore. All totaled, before its eventual sale in the late 1980s, MTM Enterprises branded over 45 programs.

Turning our attention back to Aaron Spelling, along with Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, and David E. Kelley, what we'd like to do in the moviehouse is offer a single, rare snapshot, if you will, from the career of each writer-producer, singling out a particular incident or unfamiliar aspect.

Aaron Spelling poses with daughter actress Tori Spelling and his
second wife (up to his death in 2006), Candy Marer, Tori's mother.

Judging by the longevity of his career, Aaron Spelling might have seemed to possess the golden touch. However, for every "Charlie's Angels" or "The Love Boat" there was a "2000 Malibu Road" (with Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Beals, and Lisa Hartman), a "Robin's Hoods" (featuring singer Rick Springfield and Playboy Playmate Julie McCullough), and a "Kingpin" (NBC's answer to "The Sopranos"), none of which made it past six episodes before being abruptly canceled.

It's a little known fact that Aaron Spelling started his show business career as an actor. He made his screen debut as a weaselly killer in the 1953 noir mystery "Vicki," a remake of a superior film noir in its own right, 1941's "I Wake Up Screaming," starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, and the incomparable Laird Cregar.

Aaron Spelling portrays the mousy murderer in "Vicki,"
which features Richard Boone as a crooked detective.

Spelling played a train robber in the 1954 western "Three Young Texans," starring Jeffrey Hunter and Mitzi Gaynor, followed by roles in a number of other pictures during the 1950s, including "Wyoming Renegades" (an early depiction of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the musical "Kismet" (as a beggar), and "The Spirit of St. Louis" (featuring James Stewart as transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh). On television, Spelling appeared as a gas station man in an episode of "I Love Lucy" (pictured below).

On a 1956 episode of "Gunsmoke" titled "The Guitar" (pictured below), Spelling guest-starred as Weed Pindle, a strumming drifter who becomes the desired target of a lynching when a couple of Southern sympathizers find out he fought for the Union in the Civil War. The powerful indictment of lynch mob mentality, which ironically turns against the troublemakers themselves as they end up the victims, was written by Sam Peckinpah.

Turnabout is fair play. In 2004, Aaron Spelling was portrayed on-screen by Dan Castellaneta (best known as the voice of Homer Simpson, Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Klown, Sideshow Mel, Groundskeeper Willie, and Mayor Quimby on "The Simpsons") in the NBC television movie "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels" (pictured below). The following year, Nicholas Hammond, the first actor to portray the live-action Spidey in the 1977 series "The Amazing Spider-Man," played Aaron Spelling in the made-for-television film "Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure."

Steven Bochco initially worked for Universal Pictures as a story editor for the series "Ironside," "McMillan & Wife," and "Columbo," the latter for which he also contributed teleplays. He left Universal in 1978 to go to MTM Enterprises, where he expanded into producing and achieved major success with "Hill Street Blues," which he co-created for NBC.

Prior to "Hill Street Blues," it was rare for a dramatic series to progress weekly on a continuous story arc. It was also uncommon for a series to incorporate a large recurring cast. The structure of modern ensemble series can be traced to Steven Bochco, whom many regard as single-handedly changing the language of television drama. During its seven-season run, the series garnered 98 Emmy Award nominations.

Bochco was fired by MTM after the failure of the series "Bay City Blues" in 1983. Although the title was similar to Bochco's hit show, and the cast included a number of carry-over actors from the "Hill," among them Dennis Franz, the comedic drama actually centered on a California minor league baseball team. Eight episodes of the program were produced, but only four aired before its unceremonious cancellation. Amid the ensemble cast was a relatively unknown Sharon Stone (pictured below).

Sharon Stone (right) poses with "Bay City Blues" costars
Michele Greene (best known as attorney Abby Perkins on
another Steven Bochco creation, "L.A. Law"), Perry Lang,
and Patrick Cassidy, half-brother of  the late David Cassidy.

Bochco moved to 20th Century Fox, where he co-created and produced "L.A. Law," which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1994. In 1993, Bocho created "NYPD Blue" (on the air up to 2005) with David Milch, a producer-writer who later created the landmark "Deadwood" series for HBO. In between, in 1990, Bochco hooked up with writer-producer William M.Finkelstein ("Law & Order," "Brooklyn South," "Murder One," "L.A. Law," "NYPD Blue") to concoct one of the oddest prime time series ever heard of.

"Cop Rock" combined traditional police procedural drama with musical theater. In a 2002 interview, Steven Bochco recalled that during production of "Hill Street Blues," a woman approached him with the proposal of turning the show into a Broadway musical. "I was hugely enamored of that," he admitted, but he thought, "Instead of bringing the cop show to Broadway, why not bring Broadway to the cop show?" He wondered, "Why couldn't you do a dramatic musical? Everybody said you're nuts, you're crazy."

The series theme song, "Under the Gun," was written and performed by two-time Oscar winner Randy Newman, who at the onset told Bochco, "You're an idiot, this'll never work," but ended up writing all the songs for the pilot. Mike Post, the composer for such television theme songs as "The Rockford Files," "Magnum P.I.," "The A-Team," "Hill Street Blues," "L.A. Law," "Law & Order," and "NYPD Blue." served as "Cop Rock's" music supervisor, overseeing a staff of songwriters who contributed at least five tunes per episode, all of which were performed live on-set by the actors and not lip-synched. When first approached about singing cops, Post told Bochco, "Don't. You're going to ruin my life and you're going to get laughed off the television. Don't do it."

The songwriters Mike Post recruited included Greg Edmonson (composer of the soundtrack to the cult series "Firefly"), jazz musician Ron Boustead, Brock Walsh (a former backup singer for Linda Ronstadt and producer of Andrew Gold's hit "Thank You for Being a Friend"), and Donny Markowitz (co-writer of "Dirty Dancing's" "(I've Had) The Time of My Life").

The series featured Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank. Married in real life at the time to Steven Bochco, Bosson was familiar to most viewers as Fay Furillo, the ex-wife of Daniel J. Travanti's character in "Hill Street Blues." The police chief was portrayed, by Ronny Cox at a time in his career when he was playing corporate villains in films like "RoboCop" and "Total Recall." Cox said he couldn't remember how he became involved with "Cop Rock," but after meeting Randy Newman and Mike Post, he heard after the fact from Bochco "that I was going to get the job whether I could sing or not."

"Cop Rock" was canceled after 11 episodes. The final episode, airing the day after Christmas 1990, concluded with the crew joining the cast, breaking character, in a closing song, with Sheryl Crow as a backup singer. In 2002, TV Guide ranked "Cop Rock" #8 among the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time, calling it "the single most bizarre TV musical of all time."

In a 2016 interview, Ronny Cox commented, "You know, it's funny. For a show that's widely vilified as 'Cop Rock' is, I'll bet you've never talked to a whole bunch of people who worked on a show that loved it as much as everybody seems to have loved 'Cop Rock.' Of all the shows I've ever been involved with, I had more fun with that show than any other show. It wasn't a great show. Sometimes it was like watching a train wreck! But I'll tell you the truth: It was the only thing I've ever been involved in, be it a TV show or a movie, where I went to work every day, whether I was called or not."

Years later, Steven Bochco said, "It was the most fun I've ever had working on a show."

In 1986, David E. Kelley was a practicing attorney who had written a screenplay in his spare time, which became the 1987 comedy drama "From the Hip," starring Judd Nelson as a rogue lawyer. The script got into the hands of Steven Bochco, who was looking for writers with a legal background for the new NBC series "L.A. Law." Bochco gave Kelley his first television writing job on the program. Although Kelley stayed at his Boston law office in case writing did not turn out, he was promoted by Bochco to executive producer. The two shared three consecutive Best Drama Series Emmy Awards for "L.A. Law," two of which were accompanied by writing awards for Kelley. Together, Bochco and Kelley created the series "Doogie Howser, M.D.," which ran from 1989-1993.

David E. Kelley stands alongside his mentor, Steven Bochco.

After Steven Bochco passed away, David E. Kelley said the loss of his mentor was "devastating...For television. For those who loved him and were loved by him. My beacon, my friend. The ground feels different now."

David E. Kelley was the captain of the hockey team at Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in political science. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Boston University School of Law, where he wrote for a sketch comedy troupe made up of fellow students. He worked for a Boston law firm, dealing mostly with real estate and non-criminal cases.

Not surprisingly, a number of the shows Kelley created centered on law firms, such as "Ally McBeal," "Boston Public," and "Boston Legal." Along with "Doogie Howser, M.D.," "Chicago Hope," which ran from 1994 to 2000, had a medical theme. Kelley's "Picket Fences" (1992-1996) was a unique depiction of the surreal goings-on in a small Wisconsin town, with a regular cast of characters including a judge, two lawyers, a medical examiner, a Roman Catholic and an Episcopal priest, and a sheriff (Tom Skerritt) struggling to maintain order in the bizarre community.

In 2010, Kelley surprised Hollywood onlookers when it was announced that he was teaming with Warner Bros. to pitch a new "Wonder Woman" series to the networks. "It's a very, very different genre for me, a very tricky beast," he told an interviewer. "I won't know whether I've cracked it or not until I've finished it."

Kelley explained, "I don't want to delude Warner Bros. or anybody else that I should be doing it, The way I've always worked has been to write a script and discover, in the process of writing it, if it's a fertile and creative place where I want to live. If I feel I can make the characters my own and it's a world rich enough for me to revisit, that's a good sign to me that it's a series worth doing." The world Kelley created for the reinvention of the DC Comics icon created in December 1941 by psychologist William Marston saw Wonder Woman as a vigilante crime fighter in Los Angeles whose mortal alter ego, now redubbed Diana Themyscira, instead of Prince, is a successful corporate executive and "modern woman" trying to balance all the extraordinary elements of her complicated lives.

The new take apparently dispensed with Wonder Woman's Greek mythological origin as an Amazon goddess in favor of a DC Comics makeover of David E. Kelley's Boston-based lawyer Ally McBeal, as played by leggy Calista Flockhart (pictured below).

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Cast as Kelley's Wonder Woman was Adrianne Palicki, who, for five seasons from 2006, played Tyra Collette, the troubled girlfriend of high school football fullback Tim Riggins on the series "Friday Night Lights." (Coincidentally, Jeffrey Reiner, who had directed several episodes of "Friday Night Lights," was selected to direct "Wonder Woman.") When released on the internet, the original design of Palicki's Wonder Woman costume (pictured below) ruffled fans as "too trashy and too bad porn-y."

Sneering at the getup as "shiny, cheap and tacky," New York magazine surmised it "looked less like a superhero outfit and more like a 'Project Runway' challenge gone awry." Fox News expressed an opinion that the wardrobe lacked "patriotism," while the Los Angeles Times polled readers, asking if the new version was a good representation of the character or more akin to a Halloween costume. Warner Bros. changed the costume for the filmed pilot, replacing the rubbery pants and blue boots with star-spangled tights and the traditional red boots.

It had been well over 30 years since the last live-action version of the superheroine was portrayed by Lynda Carter in the campy 1970s series. Carter's take on Palicki's costume was "What's not to like? Adrianne looks gorgeous, and I'm really looking forward to seeing David E. Kelley's new series."

Four-time Oscar nominee for Best Costume Design Donfeld
(born Donald Feld) designed Lynda Carter's iconic costume.

The then-60-year-old actress said, "I talked to David Kelley about doing something in the pilot, but with my new CD, 'Crazy Little Things,' coming out in April and touring for the album, we couldn't coordinate our schedules, but you never know what will happen in the future. Stay tuned!"

Adrianne Palicki finally gets around to slipping into the iconic
hotpants for a final showdown with the villain.  Speaking of icons,
Wonder Woman's "invisible plane" has been transformed into a
single-seat shuttlecraft by concept designer Patrick Janicke.

The supporting cast for Kelley's pilot featured Elizabeth Hurley ("Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery") as villainous Veronica Cale, Cary Elwes ("The Princess Bride") as Henry Detmer, Diana's assistant, and Edward Herrmann as Senator Warren.

All five networks initially passed on the script, while NBC eventually ordered the pilot in January 2011. Television critic Alan Sepinwall described the pilot episode as "embarrassing...it was all I had feared, and more." On May 12, NBC announced it wouldn't be picking up the project as a series. Reviewer Neil Calloway commented, "We didn't really lose anything by it not being commissioned into a series."

Wonder Woman would finally take off, of course, on the big screen in the DC Extended Universe as portrayed by Israeli-born actress Gal Gadot in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."

Gadot (pictured above) repeated the role in 2017 in "Wonder Woman" and "Justice League" and will reprise the character in at least three planned future productions.

As for Adrianne Palicki, she finally portrayed a comic book heroine when she was cast in "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." as Mockingbird (pictured above), otherwise known as Barbara "Bobbi" Morse. She played the character from 2014 to 2016. Palicki then landed the role of Seth MacFarlane's ex-wife on the Fox science fiction comedy series "The Orville."

On "Harry's Law," Erica Durance plays a lady who dresses as
Wonder Woman to dole out vigilante justice to abusive men.

Adrianne's Wonder Woman costume from the failed pilot was resurrected by actress Erica Durance (best known as Lois Lane in "Smallville") in a January 2012 episode of the Kathy Bates legal comedy-drama series "Harry's Law," which was created, written, and executive produced by David E. Kelley, who presumably happened to have the costume hanging in his office closet.

Stephen J. Cannell, the founder of Cannell Entertainment and the Cannell Studios, won an Emmy Award and two Writer's Guild Awards. As the author of 16 novels, including a series of books featuring LAPD Detective Shane Scully, he was nominated for two Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America. As a child, he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia and struggled through school, especially in English classes, although he wrote in a yearbook that it was his ambition to become an author. Ironically, years later, "The Sopranos" creator David  Chase, who worked with Cannell on "The Rockford Files," remarked that nobody he ever met loved writing as much as Cannell did.

Cannell worked for his father's successful interior decorating company before selling his first script to the Universal Television series "It Takes a Thief" in 1968. He was hired by the television production branch of Universal Studios and was soon writing for such crime series as "Columbo" and "Ironside" before being hired as a story editor for "Adam-12" during its fourth season in 1971.

The list of series Cannell had a hand in creating is legion: "The Rockford Files," "Black Sheep Squadron," "The Greatest American Hero," "Hardcastle and McCormick," "Hunter," "The A-Team," "Wiseguy," "The Commish," "21 Jump Street." Steven Bochco recalled how "every young writer on the Universal lot would stop by Cannell's office to read scripts from 'The Rockford Files.' They were so smart and so funny, and he was just knocking them out one after another. He was not a cookie-cutter writer - he was completely original."

Through a number of revisions, the trademark closing image of
Stephen J. Cannell's television productions pictured him tossing
a page ripped out of his IBM Selectric typewriter into the air.

In 1978, Cannell and Steven Bochco created "Richie Brockelman, Private Detective," an offshoot of "The Rockford Files" featuring a character played by Dennis Dugan. At first regarded as a breath of fresh air in the genre of television crime drama, the series aired for only five episodes. (Dennis Dugan went on to become a successful comedy director in partnership with Adam Sandler, with whom he has collaborated on eight motion pictures, from "Happy Gilmore" to "Grown Ups 2.")

Stephen J. Cannell occasionally flirted with acting, most notably in a recurring role as crooked U.S. Marshal Dutch Dixon on the 1992-1997 syndicated series "Renegade," featuring Lorenzo Lamas as an ex-cop-framed-for-murder-he-didn't-commit-turned-biker-bounty hunter. Not coincidentally, Cannell was the series' creator, writer, and executive producer.

In a '90s fashion splash, evil Stephen J. Cannell (right) poses on the
set of "Renegade" with series stars Lorenzo Lamas, Branscombe
Richmond, and Kathleen Kinmont (married to Lamas, 1989-1993).

For whatever reason, Stephen J. Cannell's oddest acting choice came in a production he had no involvement in as a producer or writer, namely a 2007 movie made for the SyFy channel called "Ice Spiders." Cannell plays the owner of the remote Lost Mountain Ski Resort, where a busload of Olympic hopefuls arrives for training with hotshot Dan "Dash" Dashiell, whose Olympic dreams were shattered by a broken leg. The cocky Dash was portrayed by Bill Paxton lookalike Patrick Muldoon, who played doomed "Roughneck" Zander Barcalow in "Starship Troopers" and had a recurring role on Aaron Spelling's "Melrose Place" as ill-fated designer Richard Hart.

Coincidentally, a stone's throw from the resort is a top secret government lab where scientists have been engineering giant spiders by splicing genes of normal spiders with DNA from fossilized prehistoric specimens found in the mountains of Afghanistan. The project is designed to be "saving lives," although exactly how is never explained. What is demonstrated is the great zest the oversized arachnids take in tackling, disemboweling, and munching on human victims once they've busted loose.

Hot on their webbed trail is lovely scientist Dr. April Sommers, played by Vanessa A. Williams. This is the Vanessa Williams who appeared as Lila, the law firm receptionist in Steven Bochco's "Murder One," not the Vanessa Williams who resigned as Miss America in 1984 after Penthouse published nude photographs.

"Ice Spiders" was directed by Tibor Takács, who became an in-house director at the Syfy channel with a résumé that includes "Mansquito," "Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep," and "Mega Snake." The Hungarian-born filmmaker burst upon the scene with an independent cult film in 1987 titled "The Gate," which featured a teenaged Stephen Dorff in his screen debut as one of two boys who discover a backyard hole that may be the gateway to Hell. The tongue-in-cheek horror fantasy was riddled with nifty special effects like pint-sized hobgoblins, a zombified construction worker sealed behind a house's drywall, and one pissed-off giant, serpentine demon (pictured below). Special visual effects designer and supervisor Randall William Cook went on to work on the visual effects for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, for which he shared three consecutive Oscars.

Poor Stephen J. Cannell was given little to do in "Ice Spiders" except discourse sagely and act professorial behind his salt-and-pepper beard amid the young tyros.

It wasn't so much the cheesy computer-generated creepy crawlers in "Ice Spiders" that annoyed us in the Moviehouse...

...as it was the cavalier boy-gets-girl ending which, like every other Syfy channel serving of pablum, finds the lovers smiling and cracking wise, completely disregarding the blood-spattered smorgasbord of humanity that needs to be mopped up.

After the last spider has dined on the last scientist, hot dog Dash
Dashiell (Patrick Muldoon) asks Dr. Sommers (Vanessa Williams)
if he can show her his scars - they smirk, walk off into the sunset.

Six years after "Ice Spiders," Patrick Muldoon teamed up with director Tibor Takács again to deal with more gigantic arachnids. This time the colossal mutants emerge from New York City subways after the crash of a Soviet space station in 2013's "Spiders 3D" (pictured below).

It was only three years after "Ice Spiders" that Stephen J. Cannell succumbed to complications from melanoma. He was 69. During the run of the light crime drama "Castle," starring Nathan Fillion as crime-solving mystery novelist Richard Castle, Cannell appeared periodically as himself, along with other real-life crime and mystery authors James Patterson, Dennis Lehane, and Michael Connelly, for poker games at Castle's apartment.

After Cannell's death on September 30, 2010, an empty chair was kept at the poker table in his memory.