Irish movies from the 80's.

darkdubh

Remember when an Irish made movie came out it would be big news?Before My left foot there were a few Irish made movies that at the time there was a lot of hype about but which have more or less disappeared ,you never see them on the telly any more and I doubt that theyre on dvd.Eat the peach was one,about a guy who builds a wall of death.It was based on a true story and I'm sure the real guy is featured on reeling in the years.Then there was Reefer and the model,quite a good thriller.Joyriders was another one,I never saw it but remember seeing it advertised a bit.

ruadhri44

I remember those films. Never saw Reefer and the Model though. Was The Courier with Gabriel Byrne any good at all?

darkdubh

ruadhri44 wrote: »

I remember those films. Never saw Reefer and the Model though. Was The Courier with Gabriel Byrne any good at all?

Saw it yonks ago on vhs.The only bit I can remember with any clarity is a nasty scene where Byrne sticks a broken light bulb into a guys eye.

kitakyushu

Haven't seen it yet but 'Taffin' is defo on my watch list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXcgt6l_LcA

darkdubh

Angel,Neil Jordans first flim which came out in the early 80's is worth a look.

ruadhri44

Sorry to say Taffin is not that great. Very bad infact.

saintsaltynuts

darkdubh wrote: »

Angel,Neil Jordans first flim which came out in the early 80's is worth a look.

Yeah id like to see that.Its a hard find id say.Anyone remember Lamb with Liam Neeson? Good film you can watch it on YouTube.

darkdubh

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

Yeah id like to see that.Its a hard find id say.Anyone remember Lamb with Liam Neeson? Good film you can watch it on YouTube.

Yes,It was shown on rte very soon after it was released.They had the young lad in it on the Late late as well at the time.

Jesus Wept

kitakyushu wrote: »

Haven't seen it yet but 'Taffin' is defo on my watch list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXcgt6l_LcA

ruadhri44 wrote: »

Sorry to say Taffin is not that great. Very bad infact.

Yea it was on tv a few months ago. I lol'ed at it for a few minutes but couldn't stick watching it any longer, dire.

darkdubh

I know that it was strictly a short film and not a full length feature but Clash of the Ash was a great film and summed up so much about Small town life in Ireland in the 80's.

kakee

darkdubh wrote: »

I know that it was strictly a short film and not a full length feature but Clash of the Ash was a great film and summed up so much about Small town life in Ireland in the 80's.

I think that was the one that featured Blackie Connors from Glenroe and was shot around the Fermoy area, some film alright.

saintsaltynuts

kakee wrote: »

I think that was the one that featured Blackie Connors from Glenroe and was shot around the Fermoy area, some film alright.

I met Alan Devlin who played the coach in the film a few years back in a Dublin pub before he died.He was a hell of an actor.

darkdubh

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

I met Alan Devlin who played the coach in the film a few years back in a Dublin pub before he died.He was a hell of an actor.

"Go on Ya gurrier,they'rl be no job in the bank for you".A great actor and legend of a real life character if the stories are anything to go by.

FatherTed

Eat The Peach was pretty dire from what I remember.

Also "Poitin" though that may have been the 70's.

Bearhunter

The Outcasts, featuring a pre-Glenroe Mick lally was a fantastic film, with a disturbing scene in which a lad who was having it away with a young wan turned into a goat...

cml387

FatherTed wrote: »

Eat The Peach was pretty dire from what I remember.

Also "Poitin" though that may have been the 70's.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Eat The Peach,It's the bleak bogland locations that add a somewhat strange grandeur to it.
I'd add Cry Of The Innocent with Rod Taylor and Cyril Cusack (1980) to the list of the infamous.
Much hyped at the time it actually was pretty awful.

nlgbbbblth

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

I met Alan Devlin who played the coach in the film a few years back in a Dublin pub before he died.He was a hell of an actor.

He played Tadhg in Fair City.

Clash of The Ash is a classic. I watch it every couple of years.

Joyriders isn't bad. It's from 1989 with some great pre-Celtic tiger footage of Dublin.

nlgbbbblth

Bearhunter wrote: »

The Outcasts, featuring a pre-Glenroe Mick lally was a fantastic film, with a disturbing scene in which a lad who was having it away with a young wan turned into a goat...

That was shown just after Christmas. Early 1983. A promo shot was on the front of that week's RTE guide.

Dr Turk Turkelton

The Playboys from circa 1988.
Robin Wright was in it.

dnme

Vague memory of a file called a "Pair of Brogues" with Niall Tobin. Sorta comedy about poitin selling iirc.

saintsaltynuts

nlgbbbblth wrote: »

He played Tadhg in Fair City.

Clash of The Ash is a classic. I watch it every couple of years.

Joyriders isn't bad. It's from 1989 with some great pre-Celtic tiger footage of Dublin.

Where could i get that film Joyriders?

darkdubh

Has anyone seen Pigs,a film from the mid 80's set in a Dublin squat?I remember reading about it but never saw it.

Mr.Biscuits

Lamb starring Liam Neeson is a classic from the 80's

jupiterjack

was eat the peach from the 80s..

nlgbbbblth

saintsaltynuts wrote: »

Where could i get that film Joyriders?

I've recently digitised my off-air VHS copy.

anonjoe555

http://www.volta.ie/films/pigs

baalthor

Criminal Conversation: A fairly obscure movie from 1980 - I remember the bit about the bra for some reason ...

http://www.tcd.ie/irishfilm/showfilm.php?fid=61733

nlgbbbblth

baalthor wrote: »

Criminal Conversation: A fairly obscure movie from 1980 - I remember the bit about the bra for some reason ...

http://www.tcd.ie/irishfilm/showfilm.php?fid=61733

I remember that one from the original RTE 1 broadcast. I think there was one house on our road that owned a VCR at the time.

It's a shame that this stuff languishes in obscurity. If it were a UK production then Network would probably have released it by now.

anplaya

all dogs go to heaven ,the kids movie, was an irish animated film released in 1989

cml387

It might be worth mentioning Morgan O'Sullivan at this point, who has made his life's work the promotion of film making in Ireland.

He may not have always made good films but he certainly helped in keeping an industry going in Ireland for over 40 years.

FatherTed

Another one that came to my mind - The Ballroom of Romance

dnme

FatherTed wrote: »

Another one that came to my mind - The Ballroom of Romance

Can anyone confirm that this was filmed at Pontoon, Co. Mayo?
I was there last weekend reliving childhood memories. I went into Healy's hotel and spoke to the current owner. He reckons the filming was not done at Pontoon but then again the wiki page reckons it was. The old ballroom at Pontoon is long since bulldozed btw, not even a footprint left.

John C

I have seen "Lamb" and "Eat the peach".

"Lamb" was shown at the Cork Film Festival. I recall a photo in the then "Cork Examiner" of some of the cast at a city butcher shop.
It showed their lamb meat display with the shop staff and this crew member.

I saw "Eat the peach" at the Capitol cinema, Grand Parade, Cork. On its billboard there was a quote of a review. "A peach of a film".
I saw it as an entertaining depection of life in Ireland at that time.
The few memories I have are:
- the guys buying a lorry full of good. When they went customs. A guy in the lorry had a pig which he made squel.
This mislead the customs about their cargo.

- the guys had purchased a tanker of petrol in Northern Ireland. While they were away from the tanker,
the security forces got an exposives robot to detonate the guy's tanker.

Murphy's Stroke
This was made in 1979 starring Pierce Brosnan and Niall Toibin. It was made by Thames Television.
Is it strictly speaking an irish movie from the 1980's?
It had Irish actors based on a true story of Irish businessmen betting in England.

I saw it in the eighties. The lead role was a Mr. Murphy played by Niall Toibin.
There was a similar book written by a Cork Examiner reporter.

In the film Niall Toibin used a very Irish colloquism.
It was at the end of the film. Murphy was leaving the courtroom.
An english reporter asked why he did it.
Murphy: "For the craic boy."
Reporter: "I beg your pardon"
Murphy: "For the sport."

nlgbbbblth

Clash Of The Ash is up now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1biWm0lqnQ

darkdubh

Yesterdays Sunday Times magazine had a section Irelands 100 greatest movies which featured a lot of those mentioned here as well as a couple of 80's movies that I''d forgotten about like Anne Devlin and Meave.

FishBowel

No mention of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa_uWT70GbA

DS19

dnme wrote: »

Can anyone confirm that this was filmed at Pontoon, Co. Mayo?
I was there last weekend reliving childhood memories. I went into Healy's hotel and spoke to the current owner. He reckons the filming was not done at Pontoon but then again the wiki page reckons it was. The old ballroom at Pontoon is long since bulldozed btw, not even a footprint left.

Chancing a (very) late reply to this post, as I came across it when trawling the interwebs in a loosely related search.

No, The Ballroom of Romance was not filmed at Pontoon (neither dancehall nor environs). The Wikipedia information is off the mark on a few points.

Filming took place in north Mayo, in and around Ballycroy, in the early eighties. There appears to be a widespread notion that Pontoon Ballroom was the “inspiration” for Trevor's story, but that honour seems to be claimed by every half-parish with an old dancehall on its hands. The setting (fifties?) would contradict that anyway, as Pontoon Ballroom wasn't built until the early sixties. I don't have Trevor's short story to hand so I can't check how specifically he anchored the locale, but a ballroom in Leitrim (Glenfarne) pops up as a reference. Pontoon Ballroom was rural inasmuch as it was incongruously plonked on an isolated lakeshore, but it was never the archetypal country ballroom of Trevor's story. There were precious few Bridies making their way to the ballroom on foot or on bikes - more your Anglias, Cortinas, Capris and Datsuns (eventually). The catchment area - Ballina, Foxford, Castlebar and considerably further afield in its heyday - put the journey well beyond the ambition of the old High Nelly.

The roadside parking on the approach to the dancehall (both sides of a twisting, narrow road, in both directions) was something to behold. Long before Health and Safety considerations held sway... (and Environmental Impact Assessments).

montreal2011

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George White

cml387 wrote: »

I have a bit of a soft spot for Eat The Peach,It's the bleak bogland locations that add a somewhat strange grandeur to it.
I'd add Cry Of The Innocent with Rod Taylor and Cyril Cusack (1980) to the list of the infamous.
Much hyped at the time it actually was pretty awful.

Taylor and O'Sullivan promoted this on the Late Late Show with Oliver Reed who'snot in the film, perhaps he was supposed to play the Nigel Davenport role.
Based on a Frederick Forsyth potboiler about a Green Beret investigating a plane crash that "accidentally"wiped out his family.

nlgbbbblth

I have Cry Of The Innocent in a Mill Creek box set with 49 other films. A quality set.

50 Suspense Classics

darkdubh

Another Irish movie from the 80s I'd forgotten about was Hushaby Baby which starred a young Sinead O Connor,she wore a wig in it and looked very cute.It was shown on RTE soon after it was released.Actually it was from 1990 so not strictly 80s but close enough.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102080/