Ten Deep 08.20.09: Low Budget Movies

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 08.20.2009

With the global recession deepening, Owain J. Brimfield proves that you don't have to dig deep to make quality cinema with a look at the top ten low budget movies!





Welcome to week 43 of 'Ten Deep'! Last week's second musical outing into the land of movie scores was met with some overwhelmingly positive feedback... must have been a blue moon or something. Let's see some:

Reactions and interactions

A number of people, including Nick and billy, had some love for both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and placed both on the same pedestal. While the sheer scope of Howard Shore's work is certainly beyond impressive, it can't compete with Star Wars in my eyes for sheer epic-ry.

A lot of commenters suggested Glory as a notable omission, which I guess I should have added to the list of golden rule exclusions for last week. Another one to add to my rental list, I suppose. Our other frequently commented-upon exclusions:

Conan the Barbarian - I love that so many people mentioned this one as it helps me keep the faith in cheesy action cinema, so much so that I watched a double bill of the Under Siege films the other night.

The Godfather - a near-inclusion despite my dislike of the film, and one that would easily have made an honorable mention if I'd done any more of those.

Rocky - I haven't seen the film in absolutely years which may contribute to the fact that this one was cut from the shortlist pretty early on.

Anything by Danny Elfman - you know, he's definitely a great composer, but for me he's more "consistently good" than "outstanding" and I couldn't pinpoint a score that would really have elevated him into the top ten (Meirsch suggests Batman Returns, although I can't condone that one).

Elsewhere, Guest#6782 wonders at the lack of "classic" films. Judging by the titles that were included, I'd think his definition of "classic" is more like my definition of "old".

Guest#4570 makes an impassioned case for the scores of Chris Nolan's recent Batman films as modern classics, although freely admits his Nolan fetish might make him a little biased. I hadn't considered those, so it's worth going back to revisit them for consideration.

Ex-'Ten Deep' writer and progenitor of this column Lucas Huddleston has some flattery, and a great suggestion in Dead Man, an under-appreciated gem which has a fantastic Neil Young score. See if you can find the video of Young composing the score that features on the DVD, which is basically him watching the film on a big screen and wailing on his guitar. Awesome stuff.

TheInsane thinks that The Fountain isn't for everyone. Maybe not, but it was definitely for me, too.

Finally some sound advice from Mac: Instead of saying something stupid like "you suck, why didn't you have x,y,z score in there?!??", I'd like to add on a few personal favourites that your readers may enjoy". Thanks for buying into the spirit of 'Ten Deep' which is all about throwing your own choices into the mix for discussion.

Moving on!

We turn our eagle eye this week to the land of the low budget filmmaker, a land populated by many a first-time auteur. It's intriguing for anyone interested in the film industry to see what other directors can scrape together on a low budget, and there are some prime examples to be found this week of what's possible with little more than the power of the imagination and some sticky-backed plastic. We'll set our arbitrary definition of "low budget" at, oooh, a quarter of a mil, since I don't want to be arguing the toss between "low budget" and "micro budget". Budget figures are taken from IMDB, natch, and exclude any post-production costs. I won't be adjusting for inflation though, so it's possible we may get some borderline cases as a result of that. Now, that budget cap may exclude some of the titles you'd expect to see populating a list such as this, like The Evil Dead, Halloween or Max Max, but don't let that put you off, there're still some classics to be found right at the bottom of the budget barrel. I'm sure that despite my painstaking research I've left off some obvious ones this week, so let me know.

As always, there's one golden rule: if I haven't seen it, it's not allowed on the list.

This week's golden rule notable omissions: The Apu Trilogy, Eraserhead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, In the Company of Men





Honorable mention: El Mariachi ($7,000)

I sense I'll get some hate for leaving this one off, but I wasn't a huge fan. Very impressive though.

Honorable mention: Bad Taste ($30,000)

Peter Jackson with the first of several low budget horrors in today's list.

Honorable mention: Pi ($60,000)

A brooding paranoid thriller made for little more than $π.

10. The Blair Witch Project ($60,000)

We kick off this week's top ten with what is very definitely a Marmite-flavored offering. The Blair Witch Project is one of those movies on which there is seemingly no middle ground for discussion - it's either an innovative, groundbreaking and piss-pants scarifyingly good horror movie, or it's a weak attempt at doing something different for different's sake resulting in a horrendously timid and boring snorefest of a horror film. Have no fear though, here I come to buck the trend and argue the case for a neutral reading of the film. While it's by no means the most frightening feature of the past twenty years or anything even approaching that, nor is it a case of ingenious viral marketing circumventing an obvious lack of content, for a low budget horror film it's pretty inventive, was wildly successful, and most importantly, is quite scary. Horror may be a subjective thing - easily exemplified; I, for instance, found Friday the 13th Part VI terrifying when I first saw it at the age of twelve, whereas now I'd be more likely to give it the MST3K treatment - but I'd argue it's not the scares that come into question here, it's more the degree of immersion - a lot of it depends on your reaction to the camerawork. If the shaky handheld video causes you no issue you're more likely to be drawn into the film and thus the scares will be more vivid; if, on the other hand, that sort of thing gives you motion sickness then you're more likely to dismiss the film (and you probably didn't like Cloverfield either). Or if, like me, you enjoyed the immersive environment and were drawn in by the pseudo-documentary feel but had the mitigating factor of watching the film in an audience full of school children, you'll probably have a more neutral opinion. Regardless of your opinions though, the fact remains that The Blair Witch Project is one of the most memorable - for a variety of reasons - horror films of recent times, and as an example of filmmakers doing creative things on a miniscule budget, is a great study for anyone interested in the art of filmmaking... and, indeed, marketing.

9. Following ($6,000)

No, not The Following, a misnomer that truly irritates me. This is the first of our truly low, low budget films this week, and the debut feature whose success led to Chris Nolan being able to make Memento, so we should all be thankful it was pretty good. Memento was also somewhat of a Following-redux, so you'll have an idea what to expect if you've seen that headscratching thriller. Nolan's film gives away its indie-filmmaker credentials and low overheads early on, with a black and white picture and a cast that looks - and acts - as though it was recruited from a local watering hole rather than a proper audition process. Despite the actorly deficiencies and rock-bottom production values though, Following demonstrates a key adage for this week's theme, which is that a well-constructed story and a talented filmmaker are a tandem that can override anything else. A modern-day noir telling the story of a nameless writer who falls in with a suave burglar only to find himself complicit in grander machinations, Nolan employs the same complex non-chronological structure that his since become his hallmark, meaning we're never quite sure which twist follows which [see what I did there???]. Although the feature runs very short at about an hour and ten, and is easily the guiltiest of this week's choices for exposing it's financial origins (by all accounts the entire film crew could travel to the shoot with their equipment, in a single cab), it's a generally taut story that evolves into a substantial mystery, with the final payoff being well worth the setup and showing a knack for a twist that Nolan would go on to develop to rival Shyamalan. While at times feeling a tad too much like a student film to score any higher this week, it remains a superb example of filmmaking on a budget that most of us could probably rustle up if we wanted to.

8. Dark Star ($60,000)

I only remembered John Carpenter's debut at the last minute when doing the writeups for this week's list, and had to hurry back and find a way to shoehorn it in to the list (for those wondering, it was El Mariachi that suffered the difficult final cut). Carpenter, as we'll also see exemplified in a later entry, is one of the kings of low budget, and Dark Star showed that ethos right from the start of his career. It's arguably the cheapest looking out of all the films this week, and may well be a contender for the cheapest looking "name" film in history, despite the fact Carpenter had $60k at his disposal. Other than the sets, which at least look fairly credible (although even then there's hardly any variety thanks to the small size of the spaceship), everything else looks as though it was financed through the spare change in Dan O'Bannon's left pocket. The special effects could have easily been replicated on a Commodore 64, and the alien is a freakin' painted beachball. It almost makes you wonder what the crew actually spent their money on. However, despite the fact that the film manages to run contrary to all the other films that make a significant improvement on how you'd imagine they'd look with such a small amount of funding, Carpenter recognizes this, and doesn't attempt to play Dark Star straight when the budget already makes it look laughable, instead going for a light-hearted tale centered around a genuine planet destroyer (not the namby-pamby kind they have in Star Wars). The highlight is surely Pinback's attempts to subdue the bouncing alien menace as it leads him a merry crusade around the ship, blending slapstick effortlessly into the sci-fi setting, but Carpenter also manages to craft what is, for my money, one of the best SF movie endings you're likely to see as the hapless astronauts meet their various fates. Indispensible viewing for fans of the director or the genre, and vital if you want to see how cheap a film really can look while maintaining shocking production values.

7. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ($84,000)

I can already sense the backlash from the horror historians telling me that this should be top of the list, but what can I say; I know it's hugely important to the genre, I just wasn't a massive fan. And this is my list, dammit! That said though, it most certainly merits its place in this week's 'Ten Deep'. Rather than taking the alternate routes of either embracing its budgetary roots and reveling in the cheapness or managing to overcome them and emerge a viably produced film, Tobe Hooper instead fostered the atmosphere of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by putting his budget to just the right use. The grainy and morose visuals bring to mind all manner of video nasties and the tone of the atmosphere is set to just the right degree of unsettling. What really makes the film work, though, is the character design of Leatherface and his motley crew of monsters, and the filthy terror of their residence. There's a reason Hooper's film begat a horror icon and remains one of the genre's most lauded works, and the style shines through as the film's torturous rampage through the viewer's psyche continues unabated. For such an inexperienced director to be able to use the budget for the film instead of against it is what marks out a number of our featured movies this week, and the sheer amount of dread that Hooper managers to wring from his simple premise via deft use of visual design is remarkable and most definitely inkeeping with our theme. You know, I think I may actually be talking myself into liking this one even more. Maybe I should break out the chainsaw and watch the Massacre again alone in a dark room...

6. Assault on Precinct 13 ($150,000)

Another slice of the maestro Carpenter, and a film that vastly improves on the previous effort Dark Star in presenting bang for your buck. Sure, the budget was more than double for Assault on Precinct 13, but it did the trick - this one actually looks like a bonafide movie feature instead of a slapdash art project, even though as mentioned, that approach did work wonders for Dark Star. Anyway, the tense brilliance of Assault has previously been covered in 'Ten Deep', when we were taking a look at the best siege movies:

"...stands up almost as well as true classics Halloween and The Thing, but is a somewhat different take on the horror/thriller genre... A masterpiece in suspense filmmaking more than representative of Carpenter's impeccable filmmaking credentials (even the score, composed by the man himself, is damn catchy)"

Hey, it's not plagiarism if you're copying your own work. It's just lazy. Much like a later film that will appear in this list, Carpenter takes a relatively straightforward setup and marshals it, with limited resources, into one of the best suspense flicks of the decade. With an apparently endless supply of reusable extras supporting a small featured cast and a cheesy synth score - the good kind of cheesy - from Carpenter's own fingers soundtracking the action, there's a surprising amount of gunplay and pyro for a such a small-scale movie, but it avoids descending into all-out, balls-out action thanks to the directorial reins. In some ways this is the film that set the stage for Halloween, not necessarily thematically, but certainly in showing that masterful use of a small budget can create a motion picture every bit as edgy and plaudit-worthy as you could want. Plus, it has a little girl being shot while eating an ice cream and a bad guy called Napoleon. What's not to like about that?

5. Primer ($7,000)

If there's only one thing to be said about Primer, it'll make your head hurt. In a good way, of course, not that I'm recommending films to masochists or anything (although maybe that could be a future topic...). No, the pain in watching this film comes from trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in the film's convoluted timeline. Centered around a couple of engineers who inadvertently find that they have created a time machine (with a number of hefty causal restrictions), Primer defies chronological convention and presents perhaps the most complex interweaved time travel narrative yet seen in science fiction. Seriously, if you thought it was difficult trying to piece together the very similar Spanish effort Timecrimes (also well worth a look), or cram Terminator 3 and The Sarah Connor Chronicles into the same timeline (I'd just about managed to reconcile that particular nugget to my own satisfaction by the end of season one), that has nothing on this bad boy. Like a couple of the other films previously mentioned this week, Primer was made on a minute fraction of a normal film's budget and is probably the best of those at concealing its origins. While it definitely doesn't look like anything special, the cinematography is handled just right to capture the film's mood and the acting is of a slightly better caliber than you would expect from such a tiny production. The real reason to watch though, is trying to unravel the boggling series of events that transpire as our two protagonists use and re-use the time machine, both in terms of the film's structure and in terms of the timeline it presents. I've seen the film twice and haven't even come close to gaining a full picture of what's actually going on. It may be a challenging watch, which can be a deterrent to some viewers, but it's the sort of intellectual narrative that doesn't come along too often, and Primer goes to show that a powerful story can drive a film to unforeseeable success, regardless of its budgetary limitations.

4. Clerks ($27,000)

One of those films that's synonymous with the low budget approach, launching as it did the career of one Kevin Smith, whose unassumingly cheap tale of two store clerks and their various low-key misadventures is as witty and forthright as it is shonky and wobbly around the edges. If we set aside - as if we may! - the connections Clerks has to the rest of the Smith ouevre, and the style of voraciously dialogue-heavy indie flicks it would soon father, it remains a viciously funny slice of inconsequential life. Populated largely by a cast of non-actors - and boy can you tell; even in the twelve years that passed until the eventual sequel, Brian O'Halloran still looks like he walked in from the street - Clerks demonstrates that all you really need to function as a movie is a quality script, blowing most of its limited budget on the soundtrack and filming in black and white because color stock was apparently too expensive (I've never wanted to substantiate that rumor due to its appeal, so apologies if it's one of those pervasive movie myths). The fact that the film was infamously rated NC-17 by the MPAA based solely on its dialogue is indicative of the content, but not a word is out of place, and once you get past the initial disconcerting feel of Smith's writing style, it's full of an assortment of prime rib-ticklers and no mistake. You can almost feel Smith's eagerness to make the film that he wants to make dripping out of the scenes as they play, and his dedication to the project is palpable, having filmed at the store where he worked in the evening hours following his daytime shifts. The fact that it's one of the cultest of cult films doesn't do it any harm either, so prepare for another look when I tackle that subject soon.

3. Night of the Living Dead ($114,000)

This one's apparently becoming something of a recurring favorite in 'Ten Deep' these days, which is a little odd because while I enjoy it, I doubt it would make my top 100. Must be the choice of weekly topics favoring this one. Employing one of the larger budgets to feature here this week (although let's remember that $114k in 1960s money is still way below the threshold of big budget, or even moderate budget), Romero's classic horror has the humble zombie to thank for its cross-generation and cross-budgetary appeal. A horror creation that became a pop culture icon, Night of the Living Dead was almost single-handedly responsible for giving us the contemporary zombie concept (cue the horror buffs coming out of the woodwork to give me seventeen examples of zombies in cinema prior to this), and deployed it to devastating effect in the simple scenario presented here. Unlike other films this week that thrived under a low budget thanks to the quality of their stories, Night has a woefully simple setup - "Argh, zombies! Run!" However, that's by no means to its detriment, as Romero uses it to instigate the classic farmhouse siege that makes up the bulk of the film, and the bulk of the scares. With the black and white picture helpfully obfuscating any particularly unsuccessful zombie make-up that might have been more evident in color (and indeed was, in similarly underfunded sequel Dawn of the Dead, although for the most part the gore comes across as remarkably adequate), it's down to the director's skills at thrills and chills, so to speak, as the film succeeds due to the horrific nature of its antagonists and the adeptness on display from Romero, who builds the tension superbly and scatters the shocks in just the right places. It's one of the classics of horror for good reason; the genre does seem to have more of a tendency than others to play into the hands of the low budget filmmaker, and Night demonstrates this fact better than any other example.

2. Once ($130,000)

I'd be horribly remiss if I didn't include Once anywhere in this list, and at the protestations of my lovely lady wife who cries at even the thought of rewatching the film for the nine billionth time, it's shunted up a little higher than it might previously have been. However, that makes it sound like this is a begrudging number two, which is far from the case, as Once is the loveliest independent film to come out of Dublin since... er, the last one. A film so low budget that director John Carney couldn't even afford names for most of the main characters (the lovelorn protagonists are named Guy and Girl respectively - pretentious display of post-modernism, or simply an underfunded screenwriter? Place bets now!), Once is what you might term a modern-day musical, with the barebones storyline (poor musicians meet, fall in unrequited love while recording an album together) using a neatly straightforward way of incorporating the songs, rather than simply shoehorning them into random places. Of course, a large degree of your interest in the movie will depend on your appreciation for folksy acoustic love songs, but hell, even if you normally shy away from that sort of sappy stuff, just give yourself a quick injection of Slayer afterwards and you'll be fine. There's some superbly crafted music to enjoy here; I defy anyone with even a remote interest in music not to get a lump in their throat watching the scene where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova first sit down in a music shop and play through the Oscar-winning 'Falling Slowly'. The burgeoning relationship is easily comparable to - and in fact, now I think about it, quite reminiscent of - Before Sunrise, and executed in an equally admirable fashion - the denouement, when it comes, is less ambiguous than Linklater's romance, but no less satisfying. And, of course, there's the heartwarming fact that the two debutant actors fell in love in real life, too. Awwwwwwwwww.

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail ($250,000)

A contentious entry due to the fact that it comes in at the uppermost end of our arbitrary "low budget" cap, nevertheless Holy Grail has always felt like a true low budget film, as if the BBC told the Monty Python guys they'd be happy to let them make a movie as long as they paid for everything themselves. Still, it's the only film I could have really allowed to top Once, and since I make the rules around here it's only right. Anyone with an interest in comedy must surely have seen this one, particularly if you're British, and if you've only ever watched the inferior (sacrilege!) follow-up Life of Brian you should do yourself a big favor and check this one out. An utterly bonkers romp through medieval Britain that sees King Arthur's knights on the quest for the titular beverage device, for the most part it would seem that it's the film's costume design that must have absorbed most of the budget, covering as it does a wide variety of medieval characters, with Terry Gilliam's animations surreally standing in where other films might have used actual effects. One of the running gags, in which the knights "ride" to Camelot by clapping two pieces of a coconut together, seems an overt reference to the low-rent production values, and even the film's ending feels cheap, albeit intentionally so. Holy Grail is packed with jokes and references that have gone down in pop culture lore, from the Knights who say "Ni" to the notorious killer rabbit, and it's a fair bet that any Englishman attempting a French accent will at some point say "I fart in your general direction". Of course, the Python style of humor ain't for everyone, but as said everyone is a cad and a loser with no funnybone, I'll ignore that extreme minority and proudly proclaim Holy Grail the greatest low budget film ever.

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We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

And finally…

Feeling aggrieved or elated at this week's ten picks? Then let me know! The magic of the interweb allows you to post your comments right here on this very page, and if they're especially insightful (or idiotic), I may even respond in the next column. Be sure to tune in next week for another edition of 'Ten Deep', but until then - keep watching the skies.