The shocking tale of Ireland's female executioner -- as told by 2 bickering friends. | Lady Betty

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Lady Betty is used with permission from Paul McGrath. Learn more at https://whackala.com.

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Two old friends, Paddy and Mick, are wiling away the evening in a cozy country club, trading tall tales over pints. They stumble upon re-telling the story of Lady Betty, the first and only female executioner in Ireland. As the two men bicker over the details, interrupting one another and arguing, they attempt to get her story straight, as Betty tries to eke out a meager existence with her son Padraic in the late 1700s.

Living in poverty, Betty has a hard life and a violent temper to match, one that eventually drove away her son. Left on her own, she grew bitter, taking in lodgers to earn money. When a rich, well-off lodger comes for the night, she decides to steal from him, setting off a strange series of events that will pique the imagination for generations to come.

Directed by Paul McGrath and written by Bobby Moloney from a story by Lorraine Harton, this animated short is a lively yarn about the hard and twisted life of a historical figure that has loomed uneasily in the national Irish imagination. Betty Sugrue was indeed the first female executioner in Ireland, and her vividly morbid life is the inspiration for a ramshackle, darkly humorous ramble about the hardness of both life and heart in one fascinating personage.

Visually, the story is rendered through an attenuated, almost surreal sense of line and muddied morbid color that gives a sense of the sinister fascination that emerges around the story of Betty, whose story is debated amusingly between the two friends at the pub, who can't quite get a grip on the details of her life. The animation allows the storytelling to compress and represent a wide range of time and detail, as well as inject notes of mordant humor through a generally dark story.

Much of the humor and energy of the film comes from the dueling voice talents of actors David Pearse and Colm Meaney, whom audiences may know from "Star Trek." They capture the weathered back-and-forth of the two friends, and their telling of the story renders Betty as both a Gothic horror story to the story of a woman gone mad from poverty and struggle. The elasticity of Betty's fascination for these men is captured deftly by the mobility and slipperiness of the animation, shifting and flexing to accommodate whatever opinion or mood the storyteller is in.

It doesn't hurt that Betty herself is such a strange figure. She did so well at her unexpected calling that she lived in prison afterward, carrying out execution and floggings for the jail. For her hard work, her sentence was commuted, and she was buried in an unmarked grave inside the walls of the jail. Hundreds of years after her death, she still exerts a hold on the imagination, both as a criminal and as a woman who found a very strange place in the world to call her own. "Lady Betty" might be the first time that many viewers encounter her, and with true crime stories drawing huge public interest, many will continue to be astounded and bedeviled by such a grim yet enigmatic figure for years to come.

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The shocking tale of Ireland's female executioner -- as told by 2 bickering friends. | Lady Betty
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