What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

I think the blair witch project was really good considering that they only seemed to have actors, tent, camera, and other very simple materials.


Yet, I'm sure someone has outdone them by now. What do you think?

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

wow i dont know thats hard to pick

Hmm... probably too many to count. I have great affection for pulling anything off on a low budget.
The Beastmaster leaps to mind.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mad Max, Night Of The Living Dead, Rocky, Halloween, Holy Grail, Rocky Horror, classics all.
Ms.45 is an old favorite.
I like some movies like Timerider, Space Hunter, and Trancers.
You get things like Let's Scare Jessica To Death, Alice, Sweet Alice, and I'm sure Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders didn't have a huge budget.

Honestly, I feel like I could fill this whole page with a list if I took the time. I mean, I feel like Scorsese, Lucas, a lot of directors, really, got worse the more money they were given to work with.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Messiah of Evil
Carnival of Souls
Last House on Dead End Street
Martin
God Told Me To
Deadly Spawn
Spider Baby
Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Portrait of Jason
Evil Dead
Curse of Her Flesh
Suffer Little Children
Frankenhooker

The title alone is worth the price of admission.

That one’s alright, though.

Yes! I absolutely should have named all of these as well.

This is much better than it has any right to be

I am a big fan of its moody moodiness.
To be clearer, I enjoy lower-budget films that accomplish something they set out to accomplish more than a lot of other movies because, even as I'm watching the film for the film's sake, I am appreciating how they achieve it while so many other people are ****ting the bed with $30M, $50M, $100M.
Take Universal's sad attempt to create a "Dark Universe". They had a budget between $125-$195M for The Mummy and they couldn't get their heads outta their asses, probably because there was so much money in it, so The Invisible Man got scaled down to $7M and they hit it outta the park. On $7M they did everything they tried to do and created one helluva tense thriller and you have to respect that. You just have to. You gotta respect when filmmakers make things happen without the ability to just wave money at it.
Like The Beastmaster, for example, there's a shot where Coscarelli is tryin to create the sense of a large town/city in the background behind the characters, but they didn't have any money, so they do a forced-persepctive thing and you can totally tell, but instead of feeling like, "Ah, that's fake", I actually felt, "Ah, I respect that". And the movie kinda went up a point for me. In fact, they did so much with no money in that movie, I love it for the fun it is, but I love it more for what they were able to pull off.
That's what low-budget is about to me.
I honestly believe that if studios wanna make better movies... they should spend less money on them.

*Adds to list*
Though, honestly, I'm adding all the ones Crumbs named that I hadn't seen to list.

Amazing movie.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

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Preach!
well said

Depends on your definition of low budget.

Under $500,000:

'Wendy and Lucy'
'Stalker'
'A Short Film about Killing'
'Funny Games'
'Spoorloos'
'Angst'
'Close Up'
'Primer'
'Nobody Knows'
'After Life'
'Taste of Cherry'
'Lebanon'
'Turtles Can Fly'
'Ratcatcher' - £30,000 !!!!!!!!!
'Lilyah-4-ever'
'Badlands' - $450,000 !!!!!!!
'Christmas in August'

The Legend of Boggy Creek - budget: $100,000

BWP was awesome, but on the subject of low-budget horror in general, someone did beat it: James Wan with the original Saw.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Coven

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

I wish IMDB had some kind of way to filter these results, because I have no idea about budgets or profits.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Anything by Ed Wood Jr.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Toxic Avenger
Class of Nuke 'Em High
Return to Nuke 'Em High Vol. 1 and 2
Tromeo and Juliet
Summer Job
Senior Week

Darren Aronofsky's Pi is the first one that comes to mind. Introduction bias may factor into this, but it's still my favorite movie by him.

Can you put an amount on low budget. Some might think 10-20 million budget. We have discussed this before with a price tag of four or five million.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (hands down)

Mad Max

_____________________________

Relatively low budget

Star Trek II
The Terminator

Huge respect for that opinion :up:

It used to be my favorite Aronofsky film as well until I rewatched Requiem for a Dream last October.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Stay Tuned (1992) - A husband and wife are sucked into a hellish television set and have to survive a gauntlet of twisted versions of shows they find themselves in.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - (2005) - Don't know why I haven't brought this up in relation to best foreign language films yet.

The Evil Dead - (1981) - This might be a cheap horror movie but look closer at everything and you'll find it's one of the greatest films ever made. I'm standing by that.

The Blair Witch Project - (1999) - You either love it or you hate it.

Eraserhead - (1977) - I could watch this film every day and feel like I'm in heaven.

You clown. :p

I gotta say, I watched this last year during the Pandemic (for my Halfway To Halloween, I think) for the first time since I was a teenager (literally 30+ years ago)... and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Really thought it was exactly what I love about these silly things.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

National lampoon's Animal House

I don't know what it is about the classic Trauma movies, but outside of Toxic Avenger, I'm kind of average on them. They feel a little too calculated, maybe. I did watch Nuke Em about ten times in jr high though, but that was probably mostly because my 13 year old brain was in love with Janelle Brady. I should probably watch it with an adult brain eventually though

DING DING DING


There are probably plenty of low budget movies I like or love, but this is the one where I think its low budget is most essential to the qualities that endear me to it.

While I wasn’t a fan, Blue Ruin is well liked by many here, and had a low budget.

I did not expect to enjoy it (like you having not watched it since my teenage years) but I did.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Where did you see that at? I wouldn't mind watching that either.

Re: What are your favorite low-budget films?
 

Juno

Was on YouTube, I don't see it anymore though

Was it a long time ago that you watched it?

Nope, literally like 3 weeks ago

Rats, I wanted to watch it. Well it's got be somewhere on the internet