Welcome to the December 2025 
newsletter from the Spaghetti Western Database, your regular newsletter of what happened last month in the world of European westerns. This is also the year in review!
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 (no really reach out, or comment below!).
NEW STUFF IN AND AROUND THE SWDB IN 
DECEMBER 2025 AND A LOOK BACK AT THE PASSING YEAR:
Foreword from the Marshall
These things don’t need a foreword, do they? Well maybe. I just want to say thank you to everyone around the globe who played a small, medium or larger role in around the spaghetti western world. I consider myself in the small-to-medium section myself, as there are others out there doing much more important work like restoring the films, fighting for the preservation of locations or interviewing the few remaining eye witnesses of the spaghetti western days. But I am happy to bring people together and provide a platform for knowledge, exchange, talk, friendship, news and so on. I hope you all had a decent year (all things considered) and I wish you a heartfelt successful and healthy 2026.
Where we stand on support of the SWDb
From time to time I nag people about donating a dollar or euro or yen or real or whatever to the project. That’s still among the best ways to support this platform. 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. We can really use the cash to beef up the server infrastructure, and if we can get enough donations we should finally hire someone to fix some major issues with the underlying tech to make the SWDb better and safer again. And that’s really the main issue plaguing me but I hope to be able to have that sorted out next year. There are things that exceed my expertise and time but IT experts cost more than the usual trickle of donations. And as you’ve witnessed many unfortunate times this year, the site gets often hammered by so-called DDOS attacks which makes the site inaccessible for the duration of these attacks. There aren’t many ways to fight these off other than throw money at the problem, so that’s just one thing we have to deal with for now, until in the future there’ll be a way to harden the site a bit more and partner with organizations that can provide the SWDb with support in that area maybe.
SWDb 
Letterboxd
Yes I’m here advertising for LB again, you know me! I personally can’t live without it, my whole week revolves around watching flix, logging them, rating them, filling gaps in my knowledge, expanding my cinematic brain library and so on. If you’re also 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. We have posted some exclusives on there and I hope to be able to add some more exclusives next year. You’ll also find all our lists so you can use LB to assist you in working through them.
Home video news:
December brought very little exciting stuff. However, Explosive Media’s new release of A Long Ride from Hell boats excellent image quality, plenty of language options and nice extras. Also, Carambola Media’s Forgotten Pistolero release gets wide availability, and the price has been seen dropping already. Germans get a new Magnificent Seven box set, otherwise not a spectacular month.
Looking back at 2025 in general, it was a bit of a mixed bag, wasn’t it. The year started strong with a whole heap of releases in France, O’Cangaceiro among them (these were later re-issued in standard editions as well and most of them do have English subtitles). Germans got a 4K release of The Great Silence, and a new BluRay of Silver Saddle in May. May is where it got really interesting, as Arrow Video’s releases of the Dollars trilogy started hitting the market in their limited editions (later re-issued). These are so far the best releases of these films, giving you the best image quality (4K with HDR), full uncut presentations with various version choices, tons of extras and so on. Lack of Italian audio in parts is annoying but overall, these can’t yet be beat. June got Germans the definitive releases of the Trinity movies so far (again these are mixed bags but uncut) and in August, Plaion continued their All’arrabiata series and the US got a long awaited HD release of Forgotten Pistolero (even though a puzzling choice of giving each audio option its own disc, wtf). In September 88 Films in the UK got back into the Eurowestern business with A Man called Noon and in November, Radiance Films released an excellent Robert Hossein box set. Strewn in between across the year were a plethora of re-issues, box sets, and minor releases. Not an altogether horrible year but very few big wins for the completists and the cinematic archeologists.
Next year will (as far as we already know) some very interesting titles. Our calendar has a few confirmed titles way into April and a few others without dates, so start saving money. A German 4K double feature of the Ringo films, a German 4K edition of Keoma, a German 4K edition of And God Said to Cain and… announced just yesterday, a 4K Edition of The Great Silence arriving in just a few weeks in the USA. Very exciting also is the arrival of Mannaja on BluRay and a BluRay release of Shango. Both highly welcome HD arrivals. More titles will be announced soon as the calendar fills up.
Please check the calendar regularly, we often update it several times a day! This is no joke, by the way. It is one of the most regularly updated pages in the SWDb and I spend way too much time each day scouting the web for home video news and information to keep that side of the SWDb super super reliable for you all, and thanks for those who help out with info, keep those emails coming!
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 obituaries over the course of the last four weeks. Over the course of the entire year, far too many lives were lost (many way before their time). We hope that by preserving the knowledge about the art they took part in we can honor their legacy.
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!
None last month. The last ten or 15 are always linked on the Main Page by the way.
Location scouting
One of the greatest things you can follow along with on Facebook and other channels is people visiting spaghetti western locations and posting pictures, guidance on how to find the right spots and often engaging in activity to help such sites preserved (Sad Hill being the most famous).
The SWDb has this past year started to greatly expand the quantity, quality and utility of location information. When travelling to such places, you can now use these for research, find GPS coordinates, tips and tricks, screenshots and more information to make location hunting a breeze. Obviously this remains a work in progress and we value your input.
In the future, we want to use this information to compile more interactive maps for Google and other mapping providers.
Locations I personally visited this year: yes, Sad Hill. And it was a blast. I have yet to go through my pictures collection and post an album, but I certainly will. And obviously it is highly recommended to travel to Burgos to make this pilgrimage.
See you also on BlueSky, where we have surpassed the mark of 685 followers this week.
Looking for a concrete project to contribute to? Check out the projects threads in the bureau category of this message board:
