Badmovies.org Forum

The thread about The Asylum in the Bad Movies section got me thinking, particularly about movies made with less than $1m, more like 500k.  What are some decent, recently made movies that have that kind of budget?  And I'm not talking about the Iron Sky rip off, haha, but movies that have a reasonable plot, good acting, good cinematography and direction. 

I'm sure there are good low budget indie movies out there, but I'm in the habit of watching multimillion dollar movies about large aliens/robots/cyborgs that blow things up, so I don't necessarily get a lot of exposure to good indie movies.  Even Undisputed II, the prison MMA movie with Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins, had a budget of $8m.  There's got to be something halfway decent out there for $1m or less!

Any suggestions?  From any genre?

Two excellent microbudget horror films that are both very enjoyable:

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

ABSENTIA

I have reviews of both posted here.

Demon Under Glass (2002) - Budget $1,000,000

Found this on one of those cheap multiple movie DVD sets and it was easily the best movie on that set.
Decent Vampire flick with a neat twist.

Wolf Creek had a budget of an estimated 1mil, which at the time was probably about 800,000 US$.

Monsters had a budget of about $500,000 and is pretty great too.

Both are good films made cheaply, unlike Asylum which are usually crap films made cheaply but kinda fun sometimes because of that.

Paranormal Activity
Kill List
Panic Button
The Last Winter

If it was under $4M, most horror films (made recently) considered memorable are within those restraints, under $1M is a little harder...

When talking about this, I think we should cap the age at 1980 on, which to me is around the start of the modern era.  Even taking that into consideration, remember $500,000 in 1980 is over a million today..  But if we go back to the 40s, A LOT of films are under $500k, like all the B-pictures. 

I thought Colin was worth a watch, which had a budget of about $70.  No joke on that number.  It's a little overlong, but an interesting take on the zombie genre.

Blair Witch Project is an obvious choice, cost under $100k.

Paranormal Activity is around $20k, if memory serves.

There's an odd slightly hard to find film from 2005 called the Prodigy.  Sort of an action/psychological thriller/horror hybrid.  It's a bit of a mixed bag, but the action scenes are actually really good.  Just needed to be trimmed by twenty minutes and the addition of one more tentpole action scene to make it good.  Budget is $115k.

Napoleon Dynamite cost around $400k.

El Mariachi cost around $7,000 and was watchable at that budget.  Worth noting hundreds of thousands were later spend to improve sound/picture for theatre use.

I haven't seen it yet, but Mulberry Street from a few years back has a budget of $60k and is supposed to be good.

The makers of that also did Stake Land.  Don't know the budget, but probably under a million and quite a solid film.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS is GOOD and LOW BUDGET. One of my favorite films.   Great. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkTz0EvfEiY

Pink Flamingos was made on a budget of just $10,000.

S.F. Brownrigg did two great low budget creepies: Don't Look In The Basement and Don't Open the Door. His other film Keep My Grave Open sucked, though. SOV movies can be fun if you're in the right frame of mind (read:drunk or high) - i.e.: Blood Cult, Revenge, Hollywood's New Blood, Blood lake. And who wouldn't pay to see Tom Savini make an ass of himself in The Ripper? Really, any sane person should steer clear of most SOV stuff. Onto better movies.....Truth Or Dare: A Critical Madness is totally nuts and I LOVE IT TO DEATH! (Cheers to RC). Rituals is brilliant but I'm not quite sure about the budget being low. Maybe I'll come up with some more when I get my head together.....