Dozens of articles as well as TV programs, plays and docus have focused on the unsolved murders of an estimated 400 women in the violent Mexican border towns of Juarez and Chihuahua.

But taking on this subject can be risky business, as the filmmakers of all three features based on the murders have discovered.

The latest effort is a Paramount Pictures Mexico-backed pic starring Jimmy Smits and helmed by Carlos Carrera, whose Oscar-nommed "The Crime of Father Amaro" was the biggest local pic ever in Mexico.

Provisionally titled "Backyard," the drama set in 1995 is written by Mexico's most acclaimed playwright Sabina Berman.

Smits plays a villain at the center of the murders, while Mexican thesp Ana de la Reguera is cast as a police chief who attempts to unveil the coverups by both U.S. and Mexican officials. Berman's production company Indigo Films is coproducing pic with veteran production shingle Argos Cine.

And like the pics before it, "Backyard" has had some rather harrowing security issues. A local actress playing a�victim in "Backyard" found a slaughtered lamb at her doorstep with a death threat. She was replaced for her protection but her substitute also received a threat, albeit with flowers. The production has also been plagued by sinister anonymous calls.

The producers have had to secure protection from of dozens of police officers. Despite the threats, pic shot on location for four weeks in Juarez before it moved elsewhere in Mexico for its last week. "Now we know how it feels to shoot a film in the middle of a war," says Berman.

At one point, a shootout just a block away from the set resulted in four deaths. "We were packed up and ready to go but our executive producer, the cast and crew bravely decided to stay put," says Argos chief Epigmenio Ibarra.�

Two previous pics also had problems while shooting in 2005. Gregory� Nava's "Bordertown," starring Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas, had to move its shoot to New Mexico. Exec producer Barbara Martinez Jitner filmed second unit footage in Juarez, where she and her crew were tailed and their hotel room ransacked. Some equipment was stolen.

Australian helmer Kevin Dobson, who directed "The Virgin of Juarez," starring Minnie Driver, Angus MacFadyen, Esai Morales and Ana Claudia Talancon, ventured into Juarez alone with a few locals to help him shoot. "I never took any high profile cast members because I was concerned they might not be safe and I didn't have the budget to provide security," he emailed from Australia. "I did feel unsafe on the southern edge of Juarez, where many of the victims bodies have been found -- largely because some young male locals were discharging automatic rifles from the roof of their house out into the desert," he relates.

While both "Bordertown" and "Virgin" garnered some attention during production and at film festivals, neither managed to reach a broader audience. Both productions went straight to DVD in the U.S.

Performance of the J-Lo-produced "Bordertown" was particularly disappointing, as it was budgeted substantially higher than the other two, failed to recoup on video and floundered in theatrical release in Mexico.

Budgeted at an estimated $3.5 million, perhaps "Backyard's" high-profile talent will give it a leg up. "It's the best screenplay we've ever worked with," says Ibarra. "It is�set against the context of the Juarez killings but it goes beyond that."