Guest Author - Andy Boxall

In 2004, director Sam Raimi released Spiderman 2, the sequel to 2002’s successful first outing. According to the Internet Movie Database, the estimated budget to make the movie was $200 million. The year after this, Peter Jackson followed his Lord of the Rings trilogy with his remake of King Kong. This cost around $207 million to make. Both these directors’ careers started with low budget horror pictures, a traditional breeding ground for new talent.

Horror films rarely have a budget that compares to the likes of studio efforts like Spiderman and The Lord of the Rings, but because they are often independent productions with very modest budgets, they make a great introduction to the world of film making for these looking for a break. Although not many directors who start this way continue making horror, some do keep the faith and those that don’t often produce other budding filmmaker’s horror pictures.

Fan Produced Horror

Some horror movie fans pick up on the fact that a basic budget and your mates in front of the camera can make a good little movie/showcase for your work too, making fan produced movies more common in this genre than most others. This wide variety of film makers, techniques, budget, experience and quality make horror one of the most colourful and varied genres around today.

Taking the two directors mentioned earlier and looking at their first set of genre movies, we can see how their efforts have given studios and investors confidence in their ability. The king of the low-budgeters, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead cost around the $350,000 mark to make, its sequel added a zero to that figure and the final entry in the trilogy, Army of Darkness, cost $11 million.

Peter Jackson released his horror opus Bad Taste back in 1987 after an extended on and off shoot and a total budget of just $150,000. This was followed by the shocking, but not really horrific, Meet the Feebles at a cost of $750,000 before breaking into the big time with the $3 million zombie movie Braindead. His return to the horror genre a few years later cost $30 million and became The Frighteners.

Although there is no denying that Spiderman, King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and fantastic films that have contributed so much to the medium, both directors early movies contain just as much innovation, usually without the aid of a computer. A case in point would be the makeshift ‘steadicam’ shots representing the ‘force’ in the original Evil Dead. Budget did not allow them to acquire a real steadicam set up, so the camera was attached to a plank of wood with operators on either end, to simulate the evil’s progress through the woods. Effective for something so cheap wasn’t it!

Modern Low Budget

Luckily, low budget still rules in horror today too. One of the most impressive horror movies of the last few years, Saw, cost only $1.2 million and its sequel, Saw II cost $4 million. Eli Roth’s recent shocker Hostel was also low budget, with a total of $4.5 million on the receipt. The discussion of low budget movies would be complete without a mention of Roger Corman (veteran of more than 300 movies), Herschell Gordon Lewis (whose Blood Fest cost only $25,000) and Lucio Fulci (The Beyond cost $400,000 and Zombie Flesh Eaters only $190,000).

All of these examples of low budget horror movies have inspired many budding filmmakers to pick up the camera and create something of their own. Part homage, part festival pleasers, part personal projects, these movies are what keep the genre so fresh. Enjoy the reviews of certain fan produced movies elsewhere on this site.

#All budget costs are estimates provided by the Internet Movie Database.