Classic low-budget science-fiction, fantasy & horror films that you like?

[Vger23]

A couple of more modern ones:

Circle (2015)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/circle_2015

Coherence (2013)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(film)

Probably not "classic status" by any stretch, so apologies if not what you are looking for.

 

[theenglish]

I would suggest Phantasm *1979* and some of its sequels, which are for me to precursors to Supernatural.

Also, how abou The Hidden 1987?

 

[RJDiogenes]

I literally wouldn't know where to start on. I even like a lot of low-budget contemporary films, let alone classic ones. But one low-budget B-movie monster flick that everyone must see is The Giant Claw.

But one thing they have going for them that a lot of assembly line blockbusters today lack is charm.

One of the reasons that I prefer low-budget and independent movies to studio blockbusters is that they feel like they were made by human hands.

 

[Reverend]

Technically the original Star Wars should count since it was budgeted at around $8 million (but wound up a little over $10 million IIRC.) If memory serves, I think I read Kurtz saying somewhere that it was about as much as the studios would spend on a comedy back then.

What counts as "classic" is also a bit of a subjective concept since for people of my generation, it'd be the slightly older movies from the 70's and prior, but to someone in their teens or 20's, it'd include the movies from the 80's & 90's that I grew up with.

I wish I could rattle off some good examples, but honestly I'm not as well up on pre-70's sci-fi or horror as I'd like to be (or indeed, cinema in general!) Most of what I've seen and *like* are the fairly obvious and well known ones (War of the Worlds, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers etc.)

As for movies I grew up with: I have a lot of affection for 'Explorers' which seems to be obscure for anyone not of a very particular age. Aside from being a fun little adventure movie that manages to hold up surprisingly well, it also introduced me to some of the aforementioned classic sci-fi movies.

 

[RJDiogenes]

The Man From Earth was pretty solid.

I just looked that up on Wiki and it sounds great. It seems to expand on the ideas that Bixby wrote about in "Requiem for Methuselah" on Star Trek. It's also remarkably similar to an episode of Twilight Zone written by Charles Beaumont.

 

[Christopher]

My thoughts go to B movies from the '50s and '60s. It Came from Outer Space is a definite classic. The original The Fly is terrific. The original Not of This Earth is one of Roger Corman's best films. I Married a Monster from Outer Space is surprisingly good.

 

[ichab]

My favorite low budget movie of all time? This one, which was made on a budget of just $300,000..

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[ichab]

Technically the original Star Wars should count since it was budgeted at around $8 million (but wound up a little over $10 million IIRC.) If memory serves, I think I read Kurtz saying somewhere that it was about as much as the studios would spend on a comedy back then.

Except back in the 70s, 8 million dollars was a lot of money to make a movie. Smokey and the Bandit, which came out around the same time, was made for $4.3 million . Rocky was made for $1 million. So really Star Wars was a high budget movie for the time that it came out in.

 

[Relayer1]

Douglas Trumball's Silent Running(1972) with a $1 million budget.

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One of the greatest movies ever.

But apart from that, boy do you lot do like some dodgy movies...

 

[Greg Cox]

But apart from that, boy do you lot do like some dodgy movies...

The dodgier the better, sometimes.

 

[Galileo7]

Road Games (1981) with a budget of $1.75 million. It is like Hitchcock's Rear Window, but set on the Australian roads.

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[Christopher]

The dodgier the better, sometimes.

On that note, I finally watched Corman's original The Little Shop of Horrors today. ShoutFactory's free streaming site was showing it as part of a Dick Miller tribute, and when I noticed that, I realized I don't remember ever seeing the film (maybe on TV when I was a kid, but not that I can recall), and figured I should remedy that. Although ShoutFactory's print is dreadful and I found a much higher-quality one on Archive.org (apparently it's in public domain). Anyway, it's a fairly fun comedy, almost a sketch comedy in its way, with digressions unrelated to the main plot like the dentist sequence. It's kind of uneven and has a weird ending, and you can tell they wrote and shot it in haste (in order to get another movie filmed on the sets from A Bucket of Blood in the last few days before they were torn down). I wouldn't call it a classic, really; I suppose it became popular later on because it was in public domain and got shown on TV all the time, like It's a Wonderful Life.

 

[JD]

This is where I point out that both "Trilogy of Terror" and "Duel" were scripted by Richard Matheson, who was pretty much the king of 1970's horror TV-movies. See also "The Night Stalker," "The Night Strangler," and the Jack Palance version of "Dracula."

Duel was the first movie Steven Spielberg ever directed, up to that point he had just directed TV episodes. I'm a huge Spielberg fan, but I've never seen Duel.

As for movies I grew up with: I have a lot of affection for 'Explorers' which seems to be obscure for anyone not of a very particular age. Aside from being a fun little adventure movie that manages to hold up surprisingly well, it also introduced me to some of the aforementioned classic sci-fi movies.

I loved Explorers when I was a kid. Some similar kids sci-fi movies from that era I loved as a kid were Flight of The Navigator and Mac and Me. I'm not really sure if they were low bugdet, so they might not actually count for this thread.
I have to admit, I was little shocked when I found out a few years ago that Mac and Me is considered one of the worst movies of all time. I've thought about giving another try as an adult some time, just to see if it really is that bad.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Explorers is great, but definitely not low-budget.

 

[Galileo7]

Duel was the first movie Steven Spielberg ever directed, up to that point he had just directed TV episodes. I'm a huge Spielberg fan, but I've never seen Duel.

Duel has brilliant direction by Spielberg. You will not regret seeing it.

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[Greg Cox]

Duel was the first movie Steven Spielberg ever directed, up to that point he had just directed TV episodes. I'm a huge Spielberg fan, but I've never seen Duel.

You should definitely check it out. I have it on DVD and it holds up very well.

And I'm not just saying that because I was Matheson's editor for so long . . ...

 

[Christopher]

Duel was the first movie Steven Spielberg ever directed, up to that point he had just directed TV episodes. I'm a huge Spielberg fan, but I've never seen Duel.

I saw parts of Duel before I ever saw the actual movie, because The Incredible Hulk's "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break" was written around stock chase footage from Duel. It was one of three first-season TIH episodes built around stock footage from Universal movies, the others being "Earthquakes Happen" (Earthquake) and "747" (one of the Airport movies, I think). At least, I think it was before. I must have seen them both on TV at various times, since I think I figured it out for myself that they shared footage rather than reading about it somewhere.

I have to admit, I was little shocked when I found out a few years ago that Mac and Me is considered one of the worst movies of all time. I've thought about giving another try as an adult some time, just to see if it really is that bad.

It's the first movie covered in the second season of Netflix's Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival. It's by no means good, but I found it isn't as unbearably horrible as legend would have it.

 

[Pondwater]

“They Live”

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Nicholas Meyer's "Time After Time" (1979)

"The Night Stalker" (1972) and "The Night Strangler" (1973)

"Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956)

David Cronenberg's "Scanners" (1981)

 

[Noname Given]

My all time favorite shoe-strig budget Sci-Fi film (probably already mentioed by someone above:
DARK STAR (1974)

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