JC Guest and directed by John Alexander with Casadelic Pictures. Experimental art house cult thriller starring James Karen. Anthony Boucher's 1943 short story "They Bite" is set at a Western oasis where the "Carkers" once killed and ate travelers; the hypothesis is floated that they were the Benders (who, in this telling, ate their victims) after leaving Kansas. There are still man-eating somethings at the oasis, and the hypothesis is that the Benders linked up with a supernatural power in the desert and became nearly immortal. Episode 4 of the 1954 television series Stories of the Century, titled "Kate Bender," focused on only the son and daughter. Candle of the Wicked (1960), by Manly Wade Wellman, novelizes the events leading up to the discovery of the Bender killings. Season 4 Episode 22 (1961) of the TV series Maverick titled “Last Stop: Oblivion” has several elements of the historical Benders crimes and how their murders were finally discovered: A young woman is looking for her fiancé who traveled by stage coach and never arrived at his destination. A family runs an inn at a stage coach transfer station. They deny that the young man stayed at their inn, but with the help of Bart Maverick, the young woman discovers that her fiancé and several other travelers have been killed and buried nearby by the innkeeper and his family. The Big Valley, Season 3, Episode 6, "Ladykiller" (1967) loosely depicts the story of the Bloody Benders, as "an innkeeper's pretty daughter is the bait used to rob and kill visitors." The inn is separated by a canvas curtain, from behind which the "Bleeck" family kills visitors (seated in a chair of honor) with a hammer. The father is guest star Royal Dano. The daughter is played by Marlyn Mason. Michael McDowell's Katie (1982) is loosely based on the Benders. In it, John and Hannah Slape set up a fortune-telling business with their genuinely clairvoyant but homicidal daughter Katie, who uses her talents to determine how much money her clients have before dispatching them with a hammer. The Western novel The Hell Benders (1999) by Ken Hodgson focuses on the manhunt for the Benders after the discovery of their crimes. In Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, the main character Shadow and his associates Mr. Nancy and Chernobog visit a clearing near Cherryvale, Kansas. Mr. Nancy tells Shadow that a group of people (the