Thread for recommending your favourite low-budget gems - they can be trashy or stupid, but you should be able to feel the love that went into making them :)
I’m starting with Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell, a ridiculous campy horror film which is more than a little indebted to the Evil Dead franchise, and has some wonderful practical effects and an absolutely fantastic title
I’d love to hear other people’s recommendations!
Since it’s the season, I must legally recommend you watch Hack-O-Lantern, one of my favorite bad horror movies. Satanic cult leader grandpa, a Halloween party with an impromptu strip show for no reason, hilariously awful acting, rock music, and the movie just stops in the middle for a 5 minute stand up session. Truly a film that has everything.
Added to my list, this sounds incredible!
Not sure if this counts, but we watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari last night. It was absolutely delightful. 1920 German silent horror film. I’ve never actually sat and watched a silent film; it was more fun than I expected! Good with a group, since unlike modern movies, you can actually talk while it’s on.
Cyborg by Albert Pyun
Starring JCVD
Post apocalyptic. Does some incredible stuff with its low budget. Intensely inspired.
Under Siege is the best Steven Seagal movie because Tommy Lee Jones is incredible and it was directed by the same dude who’d go on to do The Fugitive with Tommy later, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend it. It is goofy fun with a strong supporting cast bringing the skills my man Steven cannot, acting wise.
Love Under Siege and The Fugitive! I love the director for his Chicago representation. He did Seagals first movie Above the Law and the Keanu/Morgan Freeman movie Chain Reaction, both set in Chicago!
Since fairly recently my brain works like garbage and remembering things is hard, so most films I remember because I really enjoyed them or because they shouldn’t have been made. But as a massive exception is Rubber (2010):
A car tire with psychic powers rolls around the desert murdering animals and people, of course the local police try to stop this criminal and if I recall correctly, there’s some meta commentary in there as well. I should really rewatch it myself to remember why it stuck with me while being convinced it wasn’t bad* (and not great either.)
*Bad for me being, Battlefield Earth levels of bad.
I think saying there’s some meta commentary in there is maybe underselling it a bit.
It’s been 10 or so years since I’ve seen it and I don’t recall how much of a spoiler that part was or wasn’t. So I played safe and undersold it 
Adore pretty much everything I’ve seen from Quentin Dupieux, but somehow have never seen Rubber! I’ll check it out as soon as I can get hold of a copy
Hard to pick a favourite of his films, but my current recommendation would be Smoking Causes Coughing - its nominally about a group of superheroes using the carcinogenic properties of smoke to fight monsters, but it happily wanders off on all sorts of bizarre tangents and is just generally a delight
Just watched “the flesh itself” on the theater (as i understand it, it will reach international waters later this year?)
Very gory, very cool
About a trio of war deserters who take shelter with a very nice old man and nothing bad ever happens
I saw the 1985 movie House for the first time this year. A friend of mine who is big on B Movies showed me, and I was so pleasantly surprised. This is a very unserious horror comedy. The premise of the film seems very serious and bleak, but it is a joy to watch and full of fantastic sequences and practical effects. October may be over but this one would be good at any time of year
Dead Heat is a goofy fun time, a cop called Roger Mortis gets murdered while investigating smash’n’grab robberies committed by nigh-invunerable zombies, then is himself zombified and forced to solve his own murder before he decomposes. Features one of the best uzi duels ever filmed.
Last month I got to see this 2024 pastoral horror low-budget movie that got a last-minute Nic Cage starring role, apparently because the cinematographer of Everything Everywhere All At Once (who also came onto this movie) happened to be friendly enough with Cage to bring him in.
I say pastoral horror because it’s ultimately a very sweet movie about two shitty teen boys learning to accept and strengthen their bonds growing up at the tail-end of a society-wiping apocalypse, under their wise father who knows he won’t always be there for them. They have to contend with fae-esque horrors that consistently unnerve your expectations of what exactly they are all the way to the finale.
Spoiler bonus that I learned from some behind-the-scenes footage:
The original monsters were meant to be root-esque hulks that just hate mankind but the whole ‘nature rejects man’ thing was too obvious with those. The cinematographer got to redesign the monsters after the original director’s departure and their main inspiration was how creepy they thought Goofy from A Goofy Movie looked! It’s easy to find on search engines when typing in “arcadian monster concept art” so I won’t upload it here.
Lately I’ve been really digging into the Poe Cycle by Roger Corman and Vincent Price (except one film), and those are really great films thanks to Corman’s eye for striking visiuals and lighting and Price’s incredible performances as heroes, villains, and sometime both in the same film. I really recommend them when it comes to old, low budget V movies.
John Huckert’s The Passing (1983)
It’s got a little bit of Science Fiction, a little bit of Body Horror, and an unending amount of empathy for people at the end of their lives, whether they face it with grace or not.
It can come across as a slow burn, especially if you go in with the expectation of a horror sci-fi flick, but if you let the movie be as kind to you as its two leads Ernie and Rose are to each other, it’s the kind of movie that feels like a warm hug but doesn’t make you feel smaller for having wanted that hug.
Content warning regarding sexual content: There is a sexual assault depicted in the first act, and in classic B-movie horror camp morality style the rapist gets a monkey wrench shoved up his ass; though no penetration is shown. There’s also some butt here and there and innocuous nudity which plays into the body horror elements later in the film.
Also it’s really awesome how much effort they put into passing off a park in the American mid-Atlantic as Vietnam for the purposes of a flashback. There’s lots of cool movie magic and visual effects in here for a project that took about 7 years to make and a budget of just under 100,000 American over that period time. I’m a sucker for pretty much everything about this movie.
This sounds very much like my sort of thing - I’ll try to track down a copy 
