From Dawn to Dusk 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000) is a "prequel" to the first film in this series. Set in Mexico at the time Bierce actually disappeared, the author takes shelter in a brothel, which is really run by... unfriendly vampires. Could the people behind this film have been on to something? Directed by P.J. Pesce with Michael Parks as Bierce.

LITERARY NOTE: The film's subtitle, The Hangman's Daughter, is the partial title of a story that became the closest to a novel Bierce ever wrote. Based on a German folk tale by Richard Voss, The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter was translated into English by Adolphe De Castro (aka Adolphe Danziger) and polished by Bierce. It was published in 1892 by F.J. Schulte, Chicago. De Castro, who had literary ambitions, was Bierce's dentist. The two had a falling out, but not about teeth. Bierce says he broke his cane over De Castro's head in a dispute over proprietary rights to The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter. After's Bierce's disappearance in Mexico, De Castro claims to have interviewed Pancho Villa in 1923, and asserts that Villa said of Bierce, "...we put him out," suggesting he ordered Bierce killed. To put it generously, De Castro was an unreliable witness, and his alleged interview with Villa, published in 1929, is filled with ambiguities. --DS

FILM BASED ON BIERCE TALE Written and directed by Leor Baum, the short film is an updated treatment of Ambrose Bierce's "The Moonlit Road," a story of surmised infidelity, murder, and the supernatural. watch video teaser. Baum says, "This is a modern adaptation that is meant to stay true to the original story while incorporating expanded themes and situations." The Indie Film Reviewer writes: "When Ambrose Bierce wrote 'The Moonlit Road' in 1907, he surely did not think it would have been adapted into a modern motion picture a hundred years later... Modern yet poetic, the audience is taken through several time travels." Go to: Moonlit Road

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