Top Ten Low Budget Horror Films: C.C.C Issue #67

Top Ten Low Budget Horror Films

When most movie-goers sit down to watch a film, they are unaware of what the production budget was. Sometimes it can seem apparent that the budget was low, whether it’s due to poor special effects or a lack of famous actors, but sometimes, a film—in this case, a horror film—can supersede a low budget and become something amazing. 

Low budget horror movies are made pretty regularly today, and have been for years, so I’m going to include a bit of criteria here to streamline the ten best: the film must have been made for 5 million dollars or less, and found success with critics and/or audiences.

10. Cabin Fever (2002)

Budget: 1.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 63 %  

Just barely squeaking in at number ten is this debut film from writer/director Eli Roth, about a flesh-eating virus that spreads amongst a group of teens when they stay at a secluded cabin in the woods. The premise isn’t that original, but the execution is great, with a nice mix of fun and fright. The gore effects are well done for such a low budget, and the acting is decent enough from the group of unknown actors. Though far from a classic, it still looks and feels like a more elaborate production than it really was.

9. Friday the 13^th (1980)

Budget: $ 550,000 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59 %

Although it only got produced because of the success of Halloween and was never a critical favourite, Friday the 13^th was a sleeper hit upon its release, and has earned its place in the history of horror for kick-starting one of the longest-running slasher franchises ever, featuring one of the most iconic killers, Jason Voorhees (even though [spoiler!] he isn’t the killer in the original). Some might laud it for further establishing clichés that would be used many more times in future films, like the promiscuous teens or the setting of a summer camp in the woods, but you can’t deny how great the effects are by Tom Savini, or how classic the scenes of violence are, or the debut of future star Kevin Bacon. It all adds up to make Friday the 13^th worthy of a place on this list.   

8. Braindead (A.K.A Dead Alive) (1992)

Budget: 3 million 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88 %

This is a comedy/horror gore fest from the director of...The Lord of the Rings? That’s right, one of Peter Jackson’s directorial efforts prior to his major Middle Earth blockbusters and King Kong remake, Braindead is basically a straightforward zombie flick but with notably frequent, outrageous, and sometimes hilarious amounts of blood and gore. Though it didn’t do well at the box office initially, it has since grown a notable reputation, which some calling it “the goriest fright film of all time”.

7. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Budget: 1.8 million 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94 %

Initially, no studio wanted to take a chance on Wes Craven’s horrific script, inspired by an article he read about someone dying in their sleep because of a nightmare, but finally New Line put it into production, and thus was born another slasher villain for the ages: Freddy Kruger. For such a low budget film, it’s surprisingly sophisticated and ambitious, with creative scares and big set pieces. Though you can see some of the strings attached today, for 1984, it was bold and well executed. With each sequel, the ideas got bigger and the budgets went up, but diminishing returns sent the series spiralling. Eventually there was the crossover Freddy vs. Jason, and a remake in 2010, with a far larger budget than the original, and yet all that additional money produced a film that failed to come anywhere close to the scariness or originality of the first.

6. Get Out (2017)

Budget: 4.5 million 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99 %

Get Out is the most recent film on this list, as well as one of the most successful, from a critical and financial standpoint. Jordan Peele wrote and directed this psychological thriller, which is almost like an episode of The Twilight Zone, creating a sense of paranoia and building tension steadily throughout its runtime, but it also tactfully addresses issues of racism at the same time. Though perhaps not that ground-breaking, in terms of its concept, the execution is damn near perfect. Well-written, well-directed, well-acted, and highly re-watchable, Get Out will likely go down in history as one of the best the genre had to offer in this decade.   

5. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 

Budget: $ 60,000

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86 %

At one time, this was the highest-grossing film in history, and that really pissed off a lot of people, because The Blair Witch Project was a huge phenomenon when it was released, even though it’s really nothing more than a few amateur filmmakers running around in the woods yelling at nothing. And yet, it’s disturbingly effective. Scream is best-known as being the prime meta-horror film of the 90’s, but The Blair Witch Project is meta in a different and even better way: did this really happen? Even though it’s common knowledge today that it’s pure fiction, there’s still something about it that’s just plain scary.

4. The Evil Dead (1981)

Budget: $ 350,000–$ 400,000

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95 %

The Evil Dead was produced by budding filmmakers and actors on a budget much lower than director Sam Raimi was originally hoping for, who made up a lot of the film as they went along, and encountered numerous issues along the way, but somehow, what spawned from the ordeal was the first chapter in a long legacy of films (plus a TV show) that’s still going to this day. The Evil Dead looks janky, and that’s because it is, but that’s part of its charm, and what makes it effective. Though the effects would improve in future films and the comedy angle would be played up more, no Evil Dead film has managed to be more frightening than the first film (with the lowest budget of all).

3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Budget: $ 300,000

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88 %

I had to double check the budget on this one, because I didn’t believe it at first. For many people out there, the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the scariest movies ever made. It was among the earlier slasher films, with one of the villains being masked and wielding a power tool, but the things that make it so scary are because of the low budget. The camera work is documentary-like, the set decoration and effects look real, and the actors seem like everyday people. It’s no wonder this franchise, like many others on this list, has had such a long legacy. 

2. Halloween (1978)

Budget: $300,000–$325,000

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93 %

Even though Halloween isn’t one of my favourite horror movies, the reverberations from the impact it made upon release can still be felt today, and for good reason. It’s a fairly simple concept, but one that was so perfectly executed. To think, the production was so low budget, they had to buy a William Shatner mask from the store for less than two dollars and re-purpose it for the killer’s mask, and now that blank white face belongs to one of the most-renowned villains in horror movie history. The fact that this horror classic, which continues to be relevant nearly forty years later, was shot in a mere 20 days for less money than some of the other best horror films that came before it like The Exorcist or Psycho, completely blows my mind. 

1. George Romero’s first three “…Of The Dead” films

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Budget: $114,000 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96 %

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Budget: 1.5 million 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93 %

Day of the Dead (1985)

Budget: 3.5 million 

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82 %

I have to give the number one spot to this unofficial trilogy of films, simply because George Romero deserves top honours for what he did with Night of the Living Dead alone, but the fact that he did it three times is incredible. Most horror movie franchises with humble beginnings, like Nightmare on Elm Street or Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Halloween, have had numerous directors come in for the sequels, but that isn’t the case with the Of the Dead films. Romero’s zombie series, though often imitated (and remade), was never taken over by another filmmaker. He alone created the franchise, and kept it going for over forty years. 

Once I started researching budgets for the best horror films, I discovered Romero almost exclusively operated on low budgets, and frequently to astounding results. Romero preferred doing his films independently, he didn’t really like the studios, and it seemed to work for him, especially when it came to making zombie films. I’m astounded just by the ultra-low-budget of Night of the Living Dead, but combine all three of these films’ budgets and that’s still just over 5 million. That’s for three movies, not just one. The trilogy features special effects that grow more ambitious and believable with each film, which makes it look like the budgets are going up drastically, but they aren’t. Night of the Living Dead is the great grandfather of successful low budget horror films, and by all accounts, the best of them all, when factoring in budget, reception, and legacy.