Recently:
The Station Agent: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340377/ 500k, 8.1 rating at IMDB
Napoleon Dynamite (I thought it was OK, but many people loved it) cost 400k.
The Thin Man was a “B” picture. I can’t find an actual figure for the budget, but according to the IMDb, it was filmed in only two weeks.
Would that be
“Noon . . . Noonuhtya.”
and
“A winged one! A breeder!”
Re Cube
It did involve a nice trick to keep costs down. The whole movie takes place in a series of cubical rooms. Not only did they build only one room, and just change the color of the lights in the walls, they didn’t even build that room. The one set they built had only 3 or 4 sides.
Re Incredible Shrinking Man
Without looking up the numbers, I doubt that this was low budget. Numerous oversized sets and props were built.
Back To The OP
Evil Dead- This film has people reacting inteligently to monsters. Instead of ‘Let’s use this opportunity to wander off and try to have sex’ or ‘No monster is scaring me out of my vacation.’, they all decide ‘Monsters! We should all get in the car and leave.’.
The Full Moon company has a long history of buying and distributing excellent scifi and horror movies. Full Moon than turns out a large number of sequels with big budgets, bad acting, and horrible writing.
Puppet Master- A friend calls a group of psychics to a seaside resort hotel. They arrive to find him dead. Horror, suspense, good acting, and characters who are believable human beings ensue.
Subspecies-A woman on vacation in Europe. Vampires. A vampire hunter. A war between two vampire half-brothers. Good writing. Good acting. Many wonderfully eerie shots that are homage to silent films. My favorite-As rescuers rush toward a door, we see a shadow cast on the victim retreat. The shadow has unnaturally long fingers and is clearly a hungry vampire who has begun slipping toward the existence of an animal. The film has a kind of artistry and dignity. One scene of a vampire emerging at sunset was clearly shot around noon. But the framing of the shot, the choreography of the scene, and the skill of the actor were such that I didn’t care.
The Full Moon made sequels stink. But these films were genuinely good.
Short shooting schedule does not equal “B” movie. Myrna Loy was one of M-G-M’s top five leading actresses at the time (with Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Jean Harlow). The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures says,
Maybe, but according to the New York Times article I read many years ago praising “B” movies, this definitely was technically a “B” film. Props can be cheap, and the special effects work (matting and rear projection) was often sub-par.
Wow! Thanks for all the great titles. My Netflix queue is bursting at the seems now!