Two '80s favourites with music industry connections: I Was A Zombie For The F.B.I. (1982) One of the most entertaining "made-in-Memphis" exploitation films ever. Looks like it cost about $2,000 to make...with acting and special effects that are laugh-out-loud ludicrous. Avoid the re-mixed/re-edited DVD. Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984) Vanity project spear-headed by L.A. glampunk band Redd Kross that feels like a John Waters-style retelling of "The Runaways" rise and fall in the music biz shot in Venice Beach with a budget of $17 for corndogs. The soundtrack is an outstanding snapshot of early '80s L.A. punk rock.
A (70’s? Too lazy to check) horror film called Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, where a group of annoyingly mischievous college students go to make a film or something in a graveyard and raise the dead. So lousy and poorly made with next to zero scares, I’m not even sure Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have touched it. Not sure how I found it or why I watched to the end.
That is way on the low side. I did all the video color-correction for Robert Rodriguez on El Mariachi at Techncolor (from the original 16mm A/B rolls), and I believe Sony Pictures spent more than $40,000 just on that alone. And the union sound mix -- where 100% of all the dialogue had to be redone from scratch, because Robert's sound crew used broken Nagras and all the sound sync was bad -- cost about $250,000. Add the blow up from 16mm to 35mm (which would easily be $50,000 back in 1992), and we're already up to $347,000. And that's actually not a terrible budget for a little indie film shot with friends and family in Austin. It wound up making $2 million theatrically, but I think did a lot better on home video and Pay TV. (Side-story: years later, I did all the color for Robert Rodriguez' Spy Kids 2, and Robert didn't remember working with me at all. He said that week, he had been up about four days in a row and was beginning to hallucinate, which made sense to me. Very nice guy, very sharp, very aware, and he actually can do the work of seven or eight people on the crew.) The Blair Witch Project is another one of those low-budget projects that people talk about, because it only cost about $60,000, but they had to go back and reshoot some stuff, plus they spent another couple of hundred thousand dollars in post re-editing and remixing the film, so that's another film that I suspect went to about $500,000. Paranormal Activity is another "found footage" movie that initially cost $15,000 to shoot, but then they spent another $215,000 finishing it. Both of those movies made about $200 million dollars ($300 million in the case of the latter), so the cost-to-budget ratio is pretty insane. Bear in mind there's dozens of "found footage" imitation movies that flopped big-time, mainly because they weren't nearly as clever and well thought out as Blair Witch and Paranormal.
@Chrome_Head: CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS! was a 1972 movie directed by Bob Clark. I've seen it a couple of times. I believe Alan Ormsby was the annoying 'director' clad in the striped pants. It's a plenty weird movie, to be sure. I think it was filmed in South Florida.
Read up a bit on it and Bob Clark was also the director of A Christmas Story. So that's weird, lol. Apparently Dead Things is a well-known cult film.
Stranger Than Paradise was my first art house experience. I need to watch it again. Mystery Train had to be cheaper than Stranger than Paradise.* * Looked it up and I was wrong …. way off.
Primer or maybe Vegas in Space which I think was filmed in someones NYC apartment. Great movie. Both of em.
John Waters films, including “Multiple Maniacs”, “Female Trouble”, “Desperate Living”; Early Russ Meyer films, such as “Wild Gals of the Naked West”; Herschel Gordon Lewis films like “The Gore Gore Girls”. These were all mentioned in John Waters’ book “Shock Value”, see I’ve watched these over the past year.
The 1973 movie BEAUTIES AND THE BEAST (which has at least 2 other titles) was filmed partially silent to save money. The budget didn't allow for a sophisticated 'Bigfoot'-type costume. This is one of those movies you could watch at the drive-in and miss 10 minutes of the picture and still not be lost because there's not much in the way of plot.
Try late 70's science fiction "C" movies... OMG. I really get a kick out of it by laughing how crappy it is. Would never get tired watching it.
I found it... This is the one. This will really take you back in time. Science fiction movies you've never seen before in the late 70's 80, 60's.. Get an instant library of classic science fiction features on twelve double-sided DVDs! You'll be transported to a time where cosmic heroes battled and prevailed in the face of cheesy special effects, implausible plots and a lot of over acting. In other words, you have all the right ingredients for endless hours of fun, all for an amazingly low price! Includes: The Alpha Incident The Amazing Transparent Man Assignment: Outer Space The Astral Factor The Atomic Brain Attack of the Monsters Blood Tide The Brain Machine Bride of the Gorilla Colossus and the Amazon Queen Cosmos: War of the Planets Crash of the Moons Destroy All Planets Eegah First Spaceship on Venus The Galaxy Invader Gamera the Invincible Giants of Rome Hercules Against the Moon Men Hercules and the Captive Women Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon Hercules Unchained Horrors of Spider Island The Incredible Petrified World Killers From Space Kong Island Laser Mission The Lost Jungle Menace from Outer Space Mesa of Lost Women Moon of the Wolf Phantom From Space The Phantom Planet Planet Outlaws Prehistoric Women Queen of the Amazons Santa Claus Conquers the Martians She Gods of Shark Reef The Snow Creature Snowbeast Son of Hercules: The Land of Darkness Teenagers From Outer Space They Came From Beyond Space Unknown World Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet Warning From Space The Wasp Woman White Pongo The Wild Women of Wongo
Roger Corman probably has several. His 2 day wonder Little Shop of Horrors, or his recycled sets of The Terror or his Puerto Rico trilogy made for nothing and very quickly.
I don't know how little it cost to make, but Steve Cochran's final pic, Tell Me In The Sunlight (made in 1965, released in '67) ranks as my bargain-basement cinema. I think he made it just to spend a lot of time with strippers without having to spend any dough; kind of like the way he left this world in such a macabre fashion.
pffft my 16 mm only cost $273.00 And my Super 8's were, like, $15.00 European and Asian Distribution took a big chunk of my profits though. Hong Kong was a tough market in the 70's!
Not for features. The post-production, the final sound mix, the final color-correction, and the release prints (or files) will kill you... even for super-cheap movies.
And the subject of the greatest single line from MST3K, "Every frame of this movie looks like someone's last known photograph."
