Most of the visitors should have noticed it by now but lets announce it anyways. I have moved my spaghetti western dvd site to a different domain name and server… probably what… 4-5 months ago? All of the content from the old site should be here now. There are some empty movie pages for now, but they never existed in the old site. Just recently added them here, but without content yet. Oh well. There are some other stuff to fix as well.
All of you who have linked to me in the past, for which I am very grateful thank you, could you please replace the old address with this new one ( http://www.spaghettiwesterndvds.com ) when you have the time and if it is not too much trouble. Fortunately, at least for now and hopefully far into the future, I have redirects from the old addresses to this new one, so even if you don’t change the links, the visitors should arrive at the correct place. So no need for panic, especially for the good people at the SWDB and the multiple links from there. 
Anyways I might contact some of the webmasters separately and ask for the link change. Maybe. Someday.
Oh yeah one more thing… I made a twitter account for the site (link is at the top of the page), and my site should automatically tweet all of my blog posts into that account. For some reason there are already couple of followers (you know who you are… 
) but I don’t except this to be a big thing, especially because my blog posts might be the only content that ends up there. I’m just not a big fan of the twitter or facebook. I don’t have anything against them though. I should probably do a facebook page/group as well…
I have added some disc infos and screenshots in the last couple of months without mentioning them.
First one is a comparison between several DVDs and one Blu-Ray for the A Fistful of Dollars. As excepted the Blu-Ray is obviously superior to everything else as far as image quality goes. The UK and German DVDs discs look surprisingly bad to my eyes when compared with the older Italian DVD. I don’t (yet) have the newer Italian DVD but I except it will be better than all the rest (as it was made from the same material as the Blu-Ray).
A Fistful of Dollars screenshot comparison.
(Note that the Italian discs of A Fistful of Dollars, DVDs and Blu-Ray, do have English audio)
I have also added screenshots from Dorado Films’ Gatling Gun and The Three Musketeers of the West, SNC/M6’s French discs (only Italian & French audio) George Hilton Sartana, Night of the Serpent (comparison with the Global Video release) and Durango Is Coming, Pay or Die, and a comparison between the two unimpressive DVDs of the Moment to Kill. There might be some more but I honestly can’t remember for sure either way.
Added info and screenshots for the Surf Video release of Per il gusto di uccidere / For the Taste of Killing (1966). Comparison reveals the Wild East disc to be much worse in image quality (screenshot from Wild East and Surf Video ) but the Italian disc suffers from more cuts and perhaps incorrect colors at some points. As usual the Wild East disc comes with only English audio track while the Surf Video has only Italian.
Italian company Medusa Home Entertainment has recently released Matalo! on DVD and the result looks very good. I was actually very surprised at the quality as I thought this kind of release might not be a possibility. I remember reading, although I’m not sure if it’s true at all, that Koch Media was going to release Matalo! at some point but they had to cancel it because good enough print wasn’t found.
I compared the Medusa disc to the older Wild East disc and have to say that the Italian disc is clearly superior in multiple ways. The only reason, and I admit it is an important one, there’s still room for the WE release is that as usual the Italian disc includes only Italian audio/subtitles. But fans might want to pick up this new disc anyways even if they can’t understand Italian (and already own another release).
Here’s one higher (1024x…) resolution image comparison which really shows what kind of difference there is. I have removed the black bars from the non-anamorphic image of the WE disc.
http://www.sundances.net/spaghetti/screenshots/wematalo.png
http://www.sundances.net/spaghetti/screenshots/medusamatalo.png
And click on the following links for
Medusa Home Entertainment & Wild East disc specs / and the rest of the screenshots
Uploaded specs and screenshots for a couple of different discs:
Dio perdona… Io no! / God Forgives… I Don’t! (1968) Seven Sept France / screenshots
Il venditore di morte / The Price Of Death (1971) X-Rated Kult DVD Germany / screenshots
¡Viva la muerte… tua! / Long Live Your Death (1971) Fravidis France & X-Cess Germany / screenshots
Thanks to Pieter Boven for all the info/screenshots.
French readers might want to know that it turns out the Seven Sept disc of God Forgives… I Don’t is actually cut despite the claims by the cover.
Just uploaded screenshots and updated the specs for the Unholy Four aka Ciakmull – L’uomo della vendetta discs from France (Evidis) and Germany (MCP). The specs and screenshots were provided by Pieter Boven. Looks like the French release is the winner concerning image quality despite being non-anamorphic (I bet you could re-encode it into anamorphic widescreen and it would still look the best), but there seems to be at least one small error on the disc. The German disc is slightly cut. These two discs come only with French (Evidis) and German & Italian audio (MCP) and no subtitles have been provided.
I have also added couple of spanish releases (no English audio/subtitles) and screenshots. These have probably been around for over a month already (not in the lists but search would have found them) but here’s the announcement for them.
Un Treno per Durango / Train for Durango (1968)
Quindici forche per un assassino / Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)
Uomo avvisato mezzo ammazzato… Parola di Spirito Santo / They Call Him Holy Ghost (1971)
I uploaded screenshots and specs for the Wild East and Global Video releases of the Unholy Four (Ciakmull – L’uomo della vendetta).
Some of you probably aren’t aware of it, but when Global Video released this one with three other releases (Dead Men Don’t Make Shadows, Arizona Colt Returns and was the third one Bastard, Go and Kill?) they obviously made some sort of mistake. I do not know what exactly is the reason, but the discs are unwatchable on my player (but seem to work better with PowerDVD 7, perhaps because the differences between computer monitor and tv…). Yet apparently for some the discs work ok.
It looks ok if there’s not much movement going on, but as soon as something starts moving the image starts flickering or ghosting or whatever… If I advance frame by frame it seems like every 5th and 6th frame are almost exactly the same (the difference is barely noticeable).
The transfer of Global Video looks like a poor PAL to NTSC conversion with interlacing and some very bad looking frames with blending of several frames/fields into one, and the same can be said for the Wild East disc. Both seem to run in PAL speed yet have the framerate and resolution of NTSC. But Wild East basically works and looks fine (it’s like all their other releases… it could have been done better, but works like it is) while the Global Video doesn’t.
Continue reading 'The Unholy Four, Wild East and Global Video'»
Just added the specs and screenshots for the Italian release of Terence Hill’s Troublemakers (Botte di natale). It has been quite a while since I saw the Suevia Films release of this one, but I’m quite sure the Italian disc looks a lot better when played no matter what your opinion on the screenshots might be. Unfortunately the Italian disc is about 1½ minutes shorter, I just don’t know what is missing.
According to ofdb.de all the three German DVDs are cut as well, including the very recent disc which has English audio. I suspect the new disc might have the same version that is on the Italian disc. But if anyone knows what the deleted scene (and how long) in the new German disc extras is, please let me know.
To celebrate “the new start” here’s couple of updates (two older ones which some, if not most, of you have missed).
Bianco Apache / White Apache from Suevia Films Spain, God’s Gun from MGM UK and Suevia Films Spain (some have probably seen the God’s Gun update previously as I did post about it elsewhere but just didn’t mention it here) and The Magnificent Texan from Simpel Moviex Germany. As I mentioned in the previous post I am thinking of changing the way the disc pages work and these are now the ones where the modifications have been made. There is a comment form at the bottom of both pages where it’s possible for anyone to comment anything regarding the discs or movies. Or you could let me (and others) know of sites with screenshots or reviews concerning the discs/movie in question…
I have marked God’s Gun UK disc as possibly cut because when the disc was released there were some talk about it missing some nudity. I did email the person who first reported it at SWWB, and he mentioned that there isn’t as much cut as he first thought. But that there would be at least one cut…
“only a brief shot of a woman’s breast during the first Saloon scuffle between Palance’s men and the Dance Hall girls is all that is missing… As far as I know, that is the only difference..”
I haven’t personally been able to confirm it either way yet. Since the movie was obviously shot fullscreen (but I do think the aspect ratio the film should be seen in is 1.85:1 ) and the fullscreen versions show more image at top and bottom, it is possible the breast in question is just out of view in widescreen instead of being cut from the print.
As for the Spanish God’s Gun disc it has a slight problem which I’d like to know if it’s just on my disc or all of them:
“At around 0:20:40 the image freezes for 8 seconds, works normally for 6 seconds and freezes again for 1minute and 55 seconds. All this time the audio sounds normal.”
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