Welcome to January 2025 newsletter from the Spaghetti Western Database, your regular newsletter of what happened last month in the world of European westerns.
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NEW STUFF IN AND AROUND THE SWDB IN
JANUARY 2025:
The year 2025 is also the year we’ve turned 20! Did we mention that last time? Yes we did.… if you have some idea on how we should celebrate this, let us know.
Emerging, ongoing and future improvement projects
At this stage I want to refer you to the December recap which had a huge rundown of all the things we’re doing and where you could help out with. For January, let’s keep things short and sweet.
… 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!
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. 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.
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.
Home video news:
In January five titles received their broad release in France (they were previously limited exclusive to one retailer), including the rare O Cangaceiro with Tomas Milian as a Brazilian bandit. There was a re-release of Once Upon a Time in the West in the US, and a 4K update to The Great Silence in Germany, uniting quality, specs and extras from the previous German, UK and French editions.
February so far, bar any changes, looks not all that impressive. Two flicks get their 4K upgrade in the USA, Companeros arrives in France, The Five Man Army arrives on BluRay in Italy (called “Mesito” there) and so on.
And as you can see from the calendar and our discussions in the BluRay news topic, there’s exciting stuff coming this summer, all the more reason to regularly check the calendar!

Obituaries
Our head of obits, the spaghettiologist @Tom_B had to update the boot hill cemetery with an unfortunate 7 new obituaries over the course of the last four weeks, the latest soul lost is legendary composer Nora Orlandi who died on new year’s day.
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!
Charley One-Eye BluRay review - The Spaghetti Western Database
New book!
I am working on a review, but so far it’s absolutely amazing.
Unboxing video:
See you next month! And also, see you on BlueSky.