The Outcasts

An excellent film which captures the superstition and tradition of rural Ireland in the 1800's. The leading characters played by Mic Lally, and Mary Ryan almost 'live' their roles, as does Cyril Cusack. Regrettably this production is rather difficult to acquire, but if successful you'll thoroughly enjoy the feature.

The corn dollies have an old pagan traditional culture for harvest time all across Europe. The larger ones are used as scarecrows or sometimes known as straw men or straw dogs and sometimes they move about. Robert Wynne-Simmons earlier wrote for The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and rather sexy for this one but in 1982 he made it much more serious and not really folk horror, based on Irish mythology and set during the Great Famine of the middle 19th century. Oddly enough Peckinpah's, Straw Dogs was made the same year as The Blood on Satan's Claw and they both had mention of those corn dollies. The Outcasts has an eerie, magical, atmosphere and the photography in the woods and those muddy or snow paths and the winter trees are made rather scary. The music of the fiddlers also makes of it something of the eerie too but there was also dancing and the thin story had influences of The Book of Thel by William Blake and poetry with W B Yeats. Beautiful, worrying, but with much charm and even if there was some struggle with the otherworldly although there was always that mystical and alluring something that was buzzing around my head.

In early nineteenth century Ireland a land full of squelchy mud, stone walls and women with big woolly shawls, the villagers are committed to superstition and folklore. Maura is different. She is rather backward, reserved and has strange visions and ideas. A mysterious, possibly supernatural fiddler, Scarf Michael, visits Maura and takes her under his wing with bizarre things occurring when he plays his fiddle - who / what is he. Following her meeting, things start going awry, rumours persist and Maura is accused of being witch.

Folk 'horror' of sorts that does manage to capture a decent sense of time and place and despite its plain strangeness and a few dubious performances it remains atmospheric even a bit spooky as it rather compellingly portrays a world that once was.

The Outcasts (1982): Released for one week in a cinema in Dublin, had a VHS release in 1983, broadcast by Channel Four in 1984, the film was until now, i\virtually mpossible to find. This 2k restoration has been created by the IFI Irish Film Archive through IFI's Digital Restoration Project funded by Screen Ireland / Fís Éireann with support from the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) and the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

A tale of Pre-Famine Ireland set in the early 19th century, elements of the Celtic Christian Church remain, the local priest (Paul Bennett) is no puritan and presides with equanimity over a shotgun (or rather shillelagh) wedding. The union is brokered by the Matchmaker Keenan (Cyril Cusack), one of the Archetypal characters who stride through this narrative. Keenan, like many in this story is unsure of his identity, we see him examining his face in a small mirror as he rides into the valley. The bride to be's sister Maura (Mary Ryan) is simple minded, away with the fairies as folk say. She is bullied by other teens, even her own family, telling her scary stories. As Keenan rides home he sees a vision of Scarf Michael (Mick Lally), a liminal character, a musician but no fiddler of Dooney, a far darker being. At the wedding feast, strange fiddle music is heard outside of the house. When the younger people go into the woods later, Maura is again bullied and separated from them and meets Scarf Michael. He performs folk magic which frightens Maura's tormentors. He says he is a conjurer but appears as more of a Shaman who is dealing with powers rather than tricks. Maura sleeps in a graveyard with Scarf Michael but this might also be a liminal space. After she gets home it is known that she was with Scarf Michael, those with grudges accuse her of witchcraft and she is blamed for every misfortune which occurs in the area. Though the priest defends her she is under threat and must summon Scarf Michael to protect her.

This is a dark magical tale entwining Irish Myths, History and the poetry of W. B. Yeats. There are magical journeys through a brutal landscape, (which sometimes has gentler forest glades), quests for answers that cannot be found in this world and maybe not in the in-between zones either. Michael tries to nurture Maura, make her aware of her own incipient powers. There is a goat in the film which is reminiscent of Black Peter in The Witch, as are other scenes in The Outcasts. I saw the film in the IFI at a special screening on Tuesday, December 12. This is a film which deserves a wider audience, the Irish Film Institute intends to screen it again in 2024. Hopefully it will be broadcast on television and made available for streaming and DVD release. Directed and Written by Robert Wynne-Simmons. 9/10.