It is Ireland in 1810 and Mary Ryan is a true child of nature.  She is so naturally attuned to the plants, animals and the weather that it scares her.  She can sense something huge and terrifying under the surface, another world waiting to come through. 

Ryan is the star of 1982’s The Outcasts, a folk horror film ignored in its time.  It is only now it is starting to get the attention it deserves, courtesy of a new BFI restoration.

The countryside looks great in this re-release, though not like anywhere I would want to live.  While everywhere is lush and green, there is also a great deal of muck.  When we first see Ryan, some of her relatives are having a game of keep-away with her petticoats.  When she finally retrieves them from the mud, we hear just how thick and viscous that muck must be.

I was never sure exactly how the various people under her father’s roof are related, except they all have a low opinion of her.  Don Foley, as that father, is a widower. He tells her point-blank that her existence is a curse and he has always regretted her birth. Not the kind of sentient I expect to see on a Hallmark card anytime soon.

Something strange I learned from his picture is Irish women back then apparently did not marry widowers.  This puts Foley in a bad spot, what with a farm to tend and, with the exception of a young male relative (who I don’t think is his son), no male heirs to run it now nor can any inherit it later.

What seems to be a new problem might actually work in his favor.  Matchmaker Cyril Cusack arrives with Máirtín Jaimsie, who has knocked up one of Foley’s daughters.  Jaimsie will now operate two farms.

At the resulting nuptials, something happens which startles the audience as much as it does Ryan.  Apparently, there is a tradition of having musicians arrive to play the reception afterwards, their heads obscured by creepy straw headpieces.  It is a solidly folk horror moment.

But then there is the sound of a violin from some distance outside and this isn’t one of the expected musicians.  This is the fabled Scarf Michael, played by Mick Lally.  This is a figure of local legend, possibly a man or maybe a mystical figures.  It is also possible he is a mixture of the two.

It seems he does have some magical powers, regardless of his nature.  It is no surprise he and Ryan are drawn to each other.  On the night after the reception, two of the female relations who endlessly torment her go to some old ruins to get their baby-making on with their beaus.  Ryan and Lally watch from afar, with him causing such mischief as making a wheel right itself and roll quite some distance into a wall.  He also clouds the mind of one of the girls, which results in her copulating with a goat. Sidebar: were women often getting their freak on with goats back then? I swear this has been a recurring theme through works set in that era, though the only one that comes to my mind immediately is Anchoress.

Speaking of goats, there is one scene early on which suggests Ryan has the potential to develop similar powers.  A goat wanders into the house and she and it exchange serious looks in what appears to be a conversation conducted telepathically.  It is not surprising when she starts being accused of being a witch. 

The writer of this film (also its director) is Robert Wynne-Simmons, who also wrote folk horror staple Blood on Satan’s Claw.  I may not necessarily like that film, but I agree it is a keystone of the genre.  But the film I was most reminded of while watching this was 2015’s The Witch.

Similar to that film, The Outcasts ends on a note of mysticism, but with more ambiguity.  Honestly, I wish it had ended just a bit before it does, at a point which feels like a more natural conclusion.  While I may not be entirely sure what has transpired right before the end credits, it gave me a strange insight into what it must be like to be a spectral being, and that is it would be awfully lonely.

Dir: Robert Wynne-Simmons

Starring Mary Ryan, Mick Lally

Watched on Deaf Crocodile blu-ray