Filmmaker Paul Duane celebrates his favourite Irish cult movie classics...
THE OUTCASTS (Director Robert Wynne-Simmons, 1982)
What is it? A darkly beautiful tale drawing on the folklore of pre-Famine Ireland and the writings of Blake and Yeats, this is a scary, sexually frank and extraordinary film about a young woman who’s considered 'odd’, who becomes fascinated by the shaman Scarf Michael. He’s feared by the people of the village she lives in, the fiddle he plays is rumoured to be strung with dead mens’ hair. Her brief association with him leads to her being made an outcast like him, with even her family turning their backs on her. But he shows her how to use her power and their fear to her advantage.
Why is it important? I saw this on RTE when I was a kid and still remember the fear Scarf Michael instilled in me, due to Mick Lally’s stunning, understated performance. I didn’t really know what a shaman was until then. The film, directed by the writer of the folk-horror classic Blood On Satan’s Claw, displays great understanding of Irish folklore, and it portrays rural pre-famine Ireland unsentimentally. The characters are superstitious, barely Christian, at the mercy of spells and the fear of being cursed.
"In this film we raided the vast store of folkloric material of which Ireland is guardian, in order to create a new myth in the ancient tradition of storytelling," says the director.
Wikipedia calls it the first Irish feature film, though I think Bob Quinn would win that battle.
How did it get made? The £130,000 budget came from the Irish Film Board (in its first iteration), the Arts Council, Channel 4 and RTÉ, with actor Cyril Cusack helping out by deferring his fee.
How did it go down? The Times praised its "astonishing visual beauty", The Mail spoke of its "brooding beauty and abundant squalor", and Dark Side magazine called it "a neglected masterpiece". It was blown-up from 16mm to 35mm for a brief Irish cinema release, won a number of festival awards, screened on Channel 4, came out on VHS (there’s an awful copy of it on YouTube, presumably sourced from this release), then disappeared. No DVD, no further TV airings, nothing.
What should have happened? Wynne-Simmons’ successful attempt to take Irish myth and embroider it with a modern psychological understanding of people’s fears, needs and desires should have been a beacon for the nascent Irish film industry. We certainly have enough lore to draw on, and centuries of struggle and misery to dramatize.
What happened instead? Folk-horror became a popular term in the early 21 st century, a process that Kier-La Janisse’s documentary Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched chronicles. Robert Eggers’ The Witch recapitulates a similar story, but catapulted him to the peak of Hollywood, while Wynne-Simmons got a few chances to direct spooky TV plays in the 80s then turned to theatre work.
Where to watch it: The Outcasts is currently being restored by the Irish Film Archive and prepared for re-release.
Paul Duane will introduce a new digital restoration of The Outcasts at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin on Tuesday, 12th December 2023 - the screening is free but ticketed. Find out more here.
Images courtesy of the Irish Film Archive. Enjoy more Irish Cult Movie Classics here.
