Low budgets and campy aesthetics don't always result in disastrous movies. In fact, some of the most influential and beloved cinematic experiences are considered B-movies, which is a label applied to films produced with tight financial restraints. While they may suffer from poor lighting and editing mistakes, good B-movies are known for pushing boundaries, inventing new tropes, and employing experimental ideas.
Genres like horror and sci-fi are known for their B-movie contributions, but the tag extends to almost any other genre - from drama to comedy to action. The best, most enduring B-movies maintain large cult followings to this day, and their impact is apparent in everything from big blockbusters to independent productions.
Made for around $750,000, Cooley High is a black coming-of-age dramedy about a group of Chicago high schoolers enjoying the final weeks of their senior year in 1964. With its Motown soundtrack and relatable characters, Cooley High went on to earn over $13 million in theatres - a major feat for 1975.
At a time when the vast majority of theatrical releases were created for and by white people, Cooley High's success established an important cinematic milestone for black moviegoers. Now considered a cult classic, the film's themes and character still resonate to this day.
Trashy, gross, and inappropriately delightful, Female Trouble is among Baltimore native John Waters's best works. It stars Waters's long-term collaborator and drag queen Divine as Dawn Davenport, who transitions from a snotty schoolgirl into a serial killer over the course of the film.
Dawn's psychopathy traces back to her childhood, when her parents refused to buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas one year. In the film, Dawn embarks on a delirious, murderous rampage while meeting quite a few characters along the way.
Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky is a director's director. His cerebral arthouse films are among the most infamous, yet most unseen, of any established filmmaker.
El Topo is one of Jodorowsky's many masterpieces; it's a psychedelic, sci-fi Western about a black-clad drifter who claims to be Jesus and wanders through a mystical, desert landscape. Teeming with Christian and Eastern religious symbols, El Topo is a philosophical journey told through expressions, moods, and colors rather than through a coherent plot.
The talented Taiwanese actor Wang Yu directed, scripted, and stars in the iconic martial arts film Master of the Flying Guillotine. A sequel to 1971's One Armed Boxer, the film sees Wang's one-armed martial arts master warring off against an imperial assassin and his cronies.
The one-armed boxer endures more physical pain and torment than any human being should ever be able to, ultimately prevailing against his enemies. Quentin Tarantino cites Master of the Flying Guillotine as one of his favorite films, and its influence on subsequent kung fu flicks is evidence.
Tobe Hooper constructed one of the most terrifying nightmares of a movie with around $140,000 and a crew of unknown actors. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would go on to earn over $30 million in theatres, and it set the standard for the slasher films that followed in its footsteps.
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In the film, a group of caravanning college kids in Texas stumbles into the lair of a cannibalistic family, where they are chased around the chain saw-yielding Leatherface. The success of the movie launched a franchise, but none of the sequels or remakes come close to the original.
Sam Raimi's beloved horror-comedy The Evil Dead was born in the fledgling director's Michigan garage, where he worked with a group of college friends to bring this tale of cursed books and demonic possession to life. Raimi eventually landed on rural Tennessee for the setting of his film, which stars Bruce Campbell as one in a group of vacationing students who unleash a great evil tucked away in their cabin's basement.
The Evil Dead was filmed with close to $400,000, and it went to net over $2.6 million during its box office run. It was followed by two successful sequels: The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness.
The Incredible Shrinking Man was filmed with an incredible budget of $800,000. Universal produced this Jack Arnold sci-fi film about a man who discovers he's shrinking after spending time in a mysterious fog.
Based on a Richard Matheson novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man was initially met with tepid feelings by critics and audiences. Over the decades, it's status as an equally outrageous and ominous character study has earned it cult status.
Bruce Lee worked his butt off to fund and produce his best and last feature film, Enter the Dragon. The movie premiered one month after Lee's death in 1973 - taking in $265 million over its $850,000 budget.
In the film, Lee plays a Shaolin martial artist from Hong Kong asked to spy on a reclusive crime lord. Enter the Dragon is a near-perfect action film, as well as one of the first to combine blaxploitation movie plots with martial arts themes.
When George Romero released his debut film in 1968, little did he know it would go on to make $30 million in theatres - an insane profit margin compared to the $114,000 Romero spent filming it. Night of the Living Dead is seen as the most important zombie movie of all time, even though the word zombie isn't used once in the film.
It stars Duane Jones as a man holed up in a rural Pennsylvania home with a small group of survivors as a horde of undead ghouls descends upon them. Stylized like an exploitation, guerilla-style feature, it includes a shocking amount of gore for the times.
When Alfred Hitchcock approached Paramount with the idea for Psycho, the movie studio was repulsed by the film's savage subject matter. Hitchcock was only allowed $1 million to shoot the film, which would go on to become one of his most emblematic and profitable.
Hitchcock spent $800,000 of the $1 million making Psycho, which follows serial killer and hotel proprietor Norman Bates as he makes moves on his latest victim. It made stars out of Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, and it inspired legions of gritty psychological thrillers that came after it.
