Best, cheap movies worth seeing
Our roundup of low budget, award-winning cinema
- Once
- The Blair Witch Project
- Clerks
- Brick
- Open Water
- Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
- The Evil Dead (1981)
- Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)
- El Mariachi
- Swingers (1996)
- Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
- Mad Max (1980)
Who needs a multi-million-dollar budget when you can make a classic, award-winning movie on the cheap? This month we’re banking on the best of the cheapest.
ONCE (2007)
Accountants take note: Evan Almighty cost $200 000 000, and won zero Oscars. Once cost $160 000, and won the Oscar for Best Original Song. But Once isn’t just about the tunes – it’s a charming, funny, heart-warming and heart-breaking romance about an Irish busker and a Czech flower seller… and packs more punch than any kind of Evan.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (2000)
With a $500 000 budget and a $248-million global box office take, this cheaply-made, cheap-looking horror flick claims the highest profit-to-cost ratio in movie history. Even if you’ve seen it already, it still deserves a second look… if only to try figure out what’s really going on in the creepy final scene.
CLERKS (1994)
Shot after hours in the convenience store where writer/director/producer Kevin Smith worked, on a discount budget of $27 575 (most of which came from Smith simultaneously maxing out 20 credit cards), Clerks charts a day in the lives of underpaid convenience store clerk Dante and his potty-mouth video shop clerk buddy Randal. If you’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of working for peanuts behind a sales counter, please consider this film to be required viewing.
BRICK (2006)
More proof that a small budget ($450 000) doesn’t always mean a cheap-’n-nasty film, Brick is a hardboiled detective story (Dead bodies? Check. Drug deals? Check. Morally dubious protagonist? Check.) set in suburbia, with a bunch of high school students as its main characters… and it’s so sharp and so original that it won a Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
OPEN WATER (2004)
Filmed for just $130 000 and featuring two unknown actors on one set (which was the ocean, so all you really see is the actors’ heads bobbing up and down), Open Water is a blood-chilling tale of two scuba diving holidaymakers who’re abandoned in the middle of the ocean by their dive-boat crew. Best you watch this one after your dolphin-diving holiday at the coast...
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004)
High on character, low on plot, this geek-at-high-school instant cult classic was shot for $400 000… most of which, you’d imagine, was spent on Napoleon’s (John Heder) collection of vintage T-shirts. Which he tucks into his waist-high jeans. Which he tucks into his moon boots.
THE EVIL DEAD (1981)
One of the original so-bad-it’s-good cult horror classics, The Evil Dead ticks all the boxes: five friends (tick) spend a weekend in an isolated forest cabin (tick) where they find an old audiotape (tick) that unleashes evil sprits (tick) which start killing them off one by one (tick). Add some outrageously bad special effects, a chainsaw and an early starring role for B-movie icon Bruce Campbell (tick, tick, boom!), and you have the makings of a classic. Twenty-six years after making this flick for $375 000, director Sam Raimi shot Spider-Man 3 for a far-less-cheap $258-million.
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)
Filmed in 1972 for just $370 000 (The Godfather, shot that same year, cost $6.5-million), Aguirre has an epic scope (Spanish conquistadors searching the Amazon for El Dorado), an epic director (barmy German Werner Herzog) and an epically insane lead actor (the certifiable Klaus Kinski). Dialogue is sparse, so you’ll be able to watch the madness unfold without being too distracted by the subtitles.
EL MARIACHI
An action comedy (although much of the comedy is unintentional), El Mariachi was shot on a 000 budget – which director Robert Rodriguez raised by (among other things) undergoing experimental medical testing. The story is pretty basic (a Mexican musician gets mistaken for a hitman) and the quality is… well, pretty much what you’d expect for a $7 000 film. But damn, it’s entertaining. And it was good enough to inspire two big-money sequels (Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico, both starring Antonio Banderas).
SWINGERS (1996)
No, not the Dutch porno… we’re talking about the $250 000, mid-90s bro-mance comedy that kick-started the careers of actor Vince Vaughan (Old School, Dodgeball), writer/actor Jon Favreau (who later directed Iron Man), and director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr & Mrs Smith).
BUBBA HO-TEP (2002)
This horror-comedy gets most of its laughs out of its outrageous premise. Having traded identities with an Elvis impersonator, the real Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) is now dying in a Texas nursing home. His only friend is an old man (Ossie Davis) who claims to be John F. Kennedy – his skin dyed black after the infamous assassination attempt. Together, these two old-timers must fight the soul-sucking Egyptian mummy that’s terrorising their old-age home. Hey, for a budget of exactly $1-million, what were you expecting?
MAD MAX (1980)
Shot for just AUS400 000 (roughly the same in US dollars at the time, give or take), this post-apocalyptic action flick launched the Oscar-winning careers of director George Miller and star Mel Gibson. It also features plenty of car chases and – of course – car crashes… making it, like the movies listed here, well worth your time.
* All these movies are available for rent from Pushplay.
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