Hollywood has always managed to cash in with genre pictures.
When it comes to cinema's biggest bang for the buck, however, studios big and small continue
to mine the spooky, blood-spattered realm of horror.
Few filmmakers have been able to get more from a meager budget than Eduardo Sánchez
and Daniel Myrick.
When the pair set out to turn their 35-page outline into a feature film in 1997, they'd
cobbled together a mere $25,000.
That modest budget gave the first-time filmmakers just enough loot to hire three completely
unknown actors, drop them off in the woods with a couple of borrowed cameras, and hope
that their efforts -- and an out-of-the-box concept -- would be enough to turn that rough
outline into a genuinely unsettling found-footage chiller.
It was more than enough.
The buzz behind The Blair Witch Project was so real that audiences flocked to theaters
the summer of 1999 to see it.
Many still believed it to be legit found footage, which had a lot to do with a radical marketing
campaign that never quite confirmed or denied the movie's authenticity.
That the film itself is such a viscerally unsettling experience in its own right only
fanned the flames, and the combination turned Blair Witch into an unexpected box office
behemoth.
With nearly $250 million in worldwide ticket sales, it ranks among the most profitable
movies ever produced.
John Carpenter's Halloween stands as one of the most revered horror movies ever made.
The near flawless 1978 film essentially gave birth to the slasher genre, but it also paved
the way for meticulously crafted character-driven scares.
And as it happens, Carpenter's groundbreaking slasher more than earns its spot on this list,
because the Horror Master himself had a mere $325,000 to bring his frightful vision to
life.
That slim budget is, of course, part of what helped Halloween stand out.
It forced Carpenter to use innovative techniques, like that steadicam perspective opening, or
taking a simple jumpsuit and a William Shatner mask and turning it into a seemingly inhuman
monster.
Though Carpenter and his many ghastly creations have continued to spook us over the years,
few have unsettled us quite like this micro-budget masterpiece has.
And even fewer have genuinely stood the test of time with such monstrous eloquence.
These days, we all know Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions as the powerhouse behind genre
hits like Sinister, Split, Get Out, and The Purge.
Prior to 2007, however, Blumhouse was known mostly as a company that wanted to produce
high-quality genre movies with little to no budget.
With a few non-professional actors, a home video camera, a seven-day shooting schedule,
and a $15,000 budget, Paranormal Activity didn't just fit the parameters for what Blumhouse
was trying to do, it essentially became the blueprint.
Oren Peli's haunting tale of a young couple tormented by a malevolent demonic presence
was the film that officially put Blumhouse on the Hollywood map.
Once the film ran through Paramount Pictures and into wide distribution, Paranormal Activity
scared up an astonishing $193 million at the box office.
"I don't think anyone anticipated it being this successful"
For the record, those numbers also earned the film the title of the most profitable
movie ever made.
With eyebrow-raising numbers like that, it wasn't long before people started throwing
the word "sequel" around.
Instead, Peli and Blumhouse's stark, no-budget vision birthed an entire franchise.
To date, the Paranormal Activity-verse has spawned a total of five sequels that have
brought in close to a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales.
Not a bad return on an initial $15,000 investment.
Though he's dabbled almost exclusively in the realm of tentpole pictures over the last
couple of decades, Sam Raimi spent the early days of his career as a low-budget genre wiz.
With a dizzying penchant for delivering both big laughs and bloody carnage with equal fervor,
1981's ghoul-fest The Evil Dead delivered a genuinely disturbing, altogether unforgettable
cinematic experience.
Raimi put together the effects-heavy film with a reported budget of only $350,000.
While it didn't exactly set the domestic box office ablaze, The Evil Dead more than turned
a tidy profit upon release, and helped set a new standard for the growing wave of shock
and schlock horror devotees.
More than anything, it proved Raimi to be a filmmaker of singular cinematic vision,
and it remains ground zero for the wild stylistic flourishes, unapologetic camp, and relentless
bloodletting that would inform virtually every one of his films thereafter.
Oh, and did we mention that The Evil Dead also made a bona fide cult sensation of its
chisel-chinned star Bruce Campbell?
Make no mistake, when George A. Romero's zombie classic Night of the Living Dead hit theaters
back in 1968, it was like nothing that had ever come before it.
The film was so singular in vision and execution that it basically invented a new horror subgenre,
and moviegoers have been devouring tales of the flesh-eating undead ever since.
"They're coming to get you, Barbara"
Of course, Night of the Living Dead wasn't always meant to be "game-changing horror."
Romero's feature debut was originally supposed to be a sci-fi comedy about hot-rodding aliens.
When budget constraints made that concept all but impossible, the idea pivoted to flesh-eating
aliens.
It finally ended up on undead, flesh-eating humans, which allowed the production to make
full use of its paltry $114,000 budget.
To say Romero got his money's worth would be an understatement.
The film's gritty style, grisly special effects, and biting social commentary hit home with
genre fans and casual filmgoers alike, and brought in a staggering $18 million at the
box office.
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