Announcing the Horrific Month of October!

We LOVE horror movies here at Silver Emulsion and we’re going absolutely fuckin’ apeshit for them come October! The entire month will feature nothing but horror reviews and I’m so excited about it! I had so many movies I wanted to get in that I’m starting it off early on the final week of September. Why? On the faulty logic that that Friday is October 1st!

I’ll be doing two reviews a week from the Empire International/Full Moon catalog on Tuesdays and Fridays, and a Dario Argento movie every Wednesday.

And Uncle Jasper’s coming in on his regular Mondays and Thursdays with a bunch of horror-inspired lucha libre films!

In addition to that, we will be attending and covering the Weekend of Horrors event featuring all kinds of killer faces from the genre! We haven’t yet worked out exactly what kind of coverage this will be, so stay tuned!

The month long event culminates in the final week of October when we both set our sights on four from the Shaw Brothers horror film library! This will be like a one-week version of the Django festival from a couple of months ago. After the break, check out the schedule for this week and the films we decided on!

A Fistful of Djangos… Final Words!

Will Silver

The first true Silver Emulsion Film Festival is over and I’m experiencing both relief and sadness. It was great fun and a good challenge and we managed to pull it off. We’ll definitely be doing more of these in the future, so check back periodically for updates on that. Now that it’s all over, I wanted Jasper and I to give a brief overview of the eight films we covered, sort of a digest version, encompassing our feelings about the eight films as a whole and against one another.

Far and away and unsurprisingly, Django is the best of the bunch. It is original in its take on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which itself has its roots in the literary work of Dashiell Hammett. It fascinates me to think of just how many films can be made off of this relatively simple story. Corbucci sets his film apart by maintaining an artistic vision throughout, painting his canvas with sharp characters, gratuitous violence and threads of social commentary. Unlike a lot of spaghetti westerns, Django innovates and redefines what a western can be. I’m looking forward to proceeding deeper into Corbucci’s catalog and hopefully discovering some more gems.

As for the imitators, I mostly enjoyed them. I was surprised that none of the films used the coffin or a machine gun at all, which makes me think that a lot of these were simply retitled or rewritten to contain the name Django to drum up business. Honestly, I would have liked to see at least one of them dragging a coffin, but because it is such a unique idea I don’t know that any of the films could have pulled it off with any of the same panache that Franco Nero did. If I try to imagine Anthony Steffen or Ivan Rassimov dragging a coffin in their respective movies, it doesn’t even work in my head so it’s probably for the best that they didn’t go that route. Although, for comedic purposes I wouldn’t mind seeing George Eastman from Django Kills Softly, dragging around a hefty coffin, all the while sporting that jovial toothy grin of his.

Hit the break to see my ordered list of the films and Uncle Jasper’s take on it all.

A Fistful of Djangos Schedule is unveiled!

A Fistful of Djangos is on! It’s gonna be a rip-roarin’ good time!

Note: During this Silver Emulsion film festival, my regularly scheduled Tuesday posts in the Empire International/Full Moon continuing series will be moved to Fridays.

WEEK 1:

July 5th, Monday:

DJANGO (1966)

[by Will]

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Starting July 5th: A Fistful of Djangos!

Hey everyone, grab your cowboy hat and your gatling gun ’cause here at Silver Emulsion we’re rolling out a two-week Django extravaganza! It will run Mon-Thurs starting July 5th and will continue the following Monday July 12th.

The Django series isn’t an actual series when defined by strict definitions, but like all good Italian films from that era, it spawned a gazillion clone movies that sought to capitalize on the first film’s success. Uncle Jasper and I are going to tackle four films each, for an eight film, two-week look at this classic Spaghetti Western series. Check back soon for more details, including a schedule of the films we’re taking a look at! It’s gonna be Django-rific!

If you’re excited about it as we are, feel free to post the banner image on your site!