Welcome to the August 2024 
newsletter from the Spaghetti Western Database, your regular newsletter of what happened last month in the world of European westerns.
How to receive this newsletter automatically: Read instructions here on how to receive this to your inbox or notifications 
newsletter. Contact us if you have any questions or news/rumors/contributions.
NEW STUFF IN AND AROUND THE SWDB IN 
AUGUST 2024:
WANTED:
We’re still trying to get in touch with our friend from Finland who went by the name of Shobary (with the popular SW website with that title). If anyone has reliable contact information, please send us a message. We want to rescue and preserve the remnants of these two websites, like we’ve done with A Fistful of Pasta.
New around the SWDb:
- Let us know if you want to help with
our new master calendar Calendar - The Spaghetti Western Database and 
company directory Company directory - The Spaghetti Western Database. These are just slowly progressing but are meant to be mostly companions to ongoing efforts to improve release date information in the database, as well as biographical information. Please contact us at any time with any info you have that is missing in the database, it’s all highly appreciated. - A steadily rising number of film pages in the database now have picture-powered dedicated credits pages. These are incredibly valuable in a lot of peoples’ quests to identify actors and characters. More are added every week.
… as always: join the SWDb, help out, it will make it better 
You don’t have to become a full time editor or official staff to contribute. Anything from being active in the forum to correcting mistakes to joining entire improvement projects is more than welcome. From all over the world, in all languages, we welcome help!
Emerging, ongoing and future improvement projects
- Improving locations information with the locations project
- Cataloging home video special features with the featurettes project
- Improving and expanding information about VHS releases in the database (these aren’t nearly as reliable and complete as we have it for DVD and BluRay). We are starting to include more Super8 information, starting with cover images.
- Improving soundtrack pages (not started, volunteers welcome)
- Adding more company, production and box office data
- technical improvements for the SWDb, including a better search, which will require time, expertise and likely money, all of which aren’t plentiful. Donations welcome, maybe at some point then I could hire someone to do it.
- We are also working on making actor pages and categories tidier, including overview pages such as “actors by picture” and so forth, a new project led by @ItalianStranger
- Lastly, more outreach is in order to reach into the far corners of the internet, and beyond the English-speaking spots.
SWDb 
Letterboxd
If you’re a Letterboxd user, we hope you follow the official SWDb Letterboxd HQ account. Click here to learn more about that. And your reminder: all the revised film pages in the SWDb have a direct link to their respective LB entry and the bottom.
Latest exclusive on our LB page:
Locations
The Almerica government is moving ahead with plans for how to preserve the Cortijo el Fraile for future tourist use. We hope they preserve it as authentically as possible without turning it into a theme park.
Home video news:
In August we got a re-issue from Arrow Video, the second Winnetou movie on 4K, some more re-releases and two premieres in Germany, one is A Town Called Hell on HD, the other is a rarer western that is presented only in DVD but at least fully uncut.
September doesn’t look too exciting so far. The same Arrow box set gets its re-release in the US as well, then there’s Bad Man’s River coming out in Germany, the 4K of Red Sun in France and the UK, and the rest are re-issues, plus a well reviewed two part emigration saga from Sweden gets an HD treatment there as well.
If we look further into the fall…
Stay tuned and keep sending us rumors and inside info! Don’t forget to use our Amazon links if you can.
Visit the SWDb home video release calendar
Obituaries
Our head of obits, the spaghettiologist @Tom_B had to update the boot hill cemetery with an unfortunate 10 new obituaries over the course of the last four weeks. Sergio Donati and Alain Delon, unfortunately are among those fresh graves.
Check out “Cemetery with crosses”
Reviews:
Please contact us if you want your reviews published. We are especially looking for reviews of movies that have no, or very few, reviews in the SWDb. We publish them in all languages, and you don’t need to be a professional writer!
Days are Numbered: Aldo Florio's Five Giants from Texas - The Spaghetti Western Database
I Want Him Dead Review by Scherpschutter - The Spaghetti Western Database
Those of you who feel inclined to donate a dollar or euro or yen or real or whatever, head here. PayPal has improved the donation experience, check it out - and you don’t even need a PayPal account to donate. Also, whenever you shop at Amazon, click on one of the SWDb’s Amazon links first, it doesn’t matter which one and what you buy.
See you next month!
