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Highly skilled directors working with top-tier actors and experienced, dependable crews rarely face the kinds of production challenges that often trouble newcomers with less-experienced teams. Consequently, these films often suffer in quality due to the production team's lack of expertise, tight budgets, and unexpected issues that arise during filming.
Regardless of the reasons, the fallout from creating poorly made horror movies burdened by even greater production mishaps can sometimes result in unintentional amusement, though likely not for those who worked on the project. Some of these films even gain a cult following over time.
Let’s take a behind-the-scenes look at how directors, actors, and crews have navigated the production challenges that derailed their low-budget projects.
10. Beast from Haunted Cave
The 1959 film Beast from Haunted Cave sets its premise right in the title. Marty Jones and Natalie, a barmaid, trigger a mine explosion to distract from their gang’s heist of a gold-filled bank vault in Deadwood, South Dakota. Along the way, they cross paths with a monster. While Natalie meets her demise, Marty manages to flee, though further clashes between the gang and the creature soon follow.
As noted in Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, the much-criticized monster in the film was inspired by a wingless hangingfly. Chris Robinson, the actor inside the creature’s suit, wore a cumbersome outfit made of aluminum strips, plywood, and chicken wire covered in muslin. Warren describes the “lightweight structure” as boosting Robinson’s height to seven feet, complete with “spindly legs and tentacles.” Robinson’s awkward, jerky movements inside the suit made the monster seem far less menacing to the more nimble human characters it chased.
9. What Waits Below
Don Sharp’s 1984 film What Waits Below faced an unexpected halt due to an accident. The story follows a group of military personnel and cave specialists investigating the sudden loss of a radio signal from a deep cave system in Central America.
In an Imagi Movies issue, actress Lisa Blount, who portrayed scientist Leslie Peterson, shared details of the incident. Her character, captured and “tied up . . . inside the cavern,” witnessed extras “silently falling over” during filming. Blount explained that the actors were “fainting as a wave of carbon monoxide swept through the set.”
Blount remembered the urgency to evacuate the cavern swiftly, but their only transportation options were the “slow-moving” golf carts available. She mentioned that the “youngest” individuals were sent out first, as the carbon monoxide levels in the confined space worsened due to a generator malfunction, which was “pumping fumes back into the cave.” The incident halted production for “several days,” Blount noted, but she remained unharmed, and no one sustained lasting injuries.
8. The House on Sorority Row
Mark Rosman, who directed The House on Sorority Row (1982), a film about sorority members playing a prank on their house mother, seized a unique opportunity: he rented a foreclosed house in Pikesville, Maryland.
However, upon arriving to begin filming, the crew faced an unforeseen issue: two squatters had moved into the supposedly vacant house. This situation, however, didn’t hinder production. The filmmakers devised a solution that worked for everyone: the squatters were hired as video assistants for the crew.
7. Terror Train
While filming Roger Spottiswoode’s Terror Train (1980), a horror movie centered around murders at a costume party held by fraternity and sorority members aboard a moving train, a crew member’s fear caused a significant production issue. As detailed in David Grove’s book, “Jamie Lee Curtis: The Making of a Scream Queen—Terror Train,” a stuntman playing a dead body floating in a freezing ravine was so terrified of the icy water that he “kept attempting to swim instead of staying still.” Art director Gary Comtois stepped in to replace the stuntman, allowing the scene to be completed successfully.
The cramped space and inadequate lighting inside the train, where much of the film’s action takes place, also posed a challenge. In an interview with The Terror Trap, Spottiswoode described how cinematographer John Alcott tackled this issue. Alcott first had electricians rewire the entire train, attaching electrical wires to “long wooden boards” where “dimmers” could be installed.
To quickly adjust the lighting, Spottiswoode recalled purchasing “boxes and boxes of bulbs” with wattages ranging from 20 to 100. This allowed the crew to swiftly “alter the lights,” either dimming or brightening the set “almost instantly.” These rapid lighting changes heightened the suspense as the killer targeted partygoers one by one.
The director also shared another technique used to enhance the lighting effects: To avoid “reflected light bouncing off walls,” the walls were “painted dark.” Alcott would stand behind the camera, using a penlight to “highlight people’s eyes” in the darkness, amplifying the eerie atmosphere of the dimly lit or pitch-black train interior.
6. Attack of the Crab Monsters
Filming a movie predominantly underwater is bound to encounter production challenges, particularly when working with a limited budget. Roger Corman’s 1957 film Attack of the Crab Monsters is no exception. The plot revolves around a group of scientists searching for a missing expedition on a remote island, only to become stranded themselves. Their situation worsens as they discover intelligent crabs determined to annihilate them in horrifying ways.
One of the film’s production issues stemmed from miscommunication, as screenwriter Charles B. Griffith, who also directed the underwater sequences, revealed in an interview with Aaron W. Graham. While filming at Marineland, Griffith was “at the bottom of the tank trying to guide the actors,” while Floyd Crosby, the director of photography, was “banging on the glass, giving conflicting instructions.”
Another potential issue was the script itself. Corman and Griffith had differing views on this. Corman aimed for a fast-paced, action-driven film with cliffhangers or ominous foreshadowing in every scene. Griffith complied but later questioned the approach, stating, “I added suspense or action to every scene, but when I watched it, the audience fell asleep!”
Corman, however, believed the relentless action, horror, and suspense made the film “the most successful of the early low-budget horror movies.” He argued that focusing on spectacle and special effects, rather than character development or subplots, kept the audience engaged, as they always felt “something was about to happen.”
Critics’ opinions, as reflected on Rotten Tomatoes, are divided but lean positive. Out of seven reviews, five awarded the film a “Fresh” rating, while two labeled it “Rotten.” This suggests that critics tend to side more with Corman’s perspective on the film’s merits than with Griffith’s.
5. The Beast of Yucca Flats
A promotional poster for Coleman Francis’s The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961) hints at the film’s simplistic plot: “Commies turned him into an atomic mutant.” The “him” refers to Soviet scientist Joseph Jaworsky, a defector who becomes a monster after fleeing KGB agents and stumbling into a U.S. atomic test site during a nuclear explosion. Widely regarded as more laughable than frightening, the movie has earned a reputation for being downright terrible.
Producer Anthony Cardoza, a “retired 29-year-old welder,” revealed that the cast was assembled from whoever was available. This included an actor’s friend, an ex-wife, the spouse of another producer, and four of the producers themselves. The only professional actor in the film was former wrestler Tor Johnson, who played the lead role.
The special effects, while creative, were notably low-budget. Cardoza explained that “crumpled” toilet paper was “glued onto Tor,” likely combined with makeup, to simulate scars from the “atomic blast,” which was depicted using “stock footage.”
Cardoza also mentioned that the film used only two interior sets: a bedroom and an apartment. When the actor scheduled to play the husband of actress Marcia Knight failed to appear, Cardoza stepped into the role himself.
The addition of unnecessary nudity highlights the lack of attention given to the movie’s storyline, let alone its artistic value. The apartment scene exists solely to feature a nude actress pacing inside during the pre-credits sequence before the Beast attacks her. When questioned about this inclusion, Cardoza, who was candid in his interview with Tom Weaver, simply stated, “Coley [director Coleman Francis] enjoyed nudity.”
4. Birdemic: Shock and Terror
Improving on genius is no easy feat, but director James Nguyen took on the challenge with his 2010 film Birdemic, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. (Tippi Hedren even makes a cameo!) Carl Daft, CEO and co-founder of Severin Films, described the movie as “the finest avian-themed romantic thriller since THE BIRDS.”
Nguyen funded the film using earnings from his “day job,” also serving as its writer and producer. As Brad Miska noted, the film “addresses pressing topics like global warming, avian flu, world peace, organic living, sexual promiscuity, and even restroom accessibility.” Spanning 93 minutes, the movie blends horror, action, and special effects into a love story about a couple trapped in a Northern California town under attack by murderous birds.
To market Birdemic, Miska explained, “Nguyen spent eight days driving around the streets near the Sundance Festival in a van adorned with fake birds, fake blood, and BIRDEMIC posters, while loudspeakers played sounds of eagle attacks and human screams. This bold strategy drew attention from festival organizers, attendees, and even local police.”
Luckily for the Silicon Valley software salesman turned filmmaker, his bold promotional strategy caught the attention of Severin Films executives. After watching the movie, they were impressed enough to secure worldwide rights to the film for two decades.
Critics, however, have not shared the same enthusiasm for Birdemic. David Harley of Bloody Disgusting described it as “a strong contender for my Top 10 Best Worst Films of All Time,” calling it a “stunningly inept and terrible film that somehow becomes captivating.” Despite its flaws, audiences seem to love it, with Miska dubbing it “one of the greatest bad movies ever made.” Its popularity even led to a sequel in 2013 and a third installment currently in production.
3. The Visit
While N. Night Shyamalan has had some successes, his list of failures is long, making it hard to pinpoint his worst film. Potential candidates include Lady in Water (2006), The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010), After Earth (2013), and Glass (2019). His string of flops has significantly damaged his reputation as a bankable director, forcing him to mortgage his “125-acre estate near Philadelphia” for $5 million to fund The Visit (2015), as noted by Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt.
This streak of failures led Shyamalan to deeply question his abilities. “The industry decided I had no value,” he admitted, reflecting on his self-doubt. “I became a cautionary tale—someone who had a lucky streak but was ultimately exposed as a fraud. . . . I lost faith in myself.”
The director aimed to revive his career, both artistically and financially, with The Visit, a found-footage horror movie. The story follows teenager Becca and her younger brother Tyler as they visit grandparents they’ve never met, only to be terrified by their strange and unsettling behavior.
Known as the O. Henry of horror and fantasy films, Shyamalan has often faced criticism for the unexpected twists in his movie endings, which many critics argue feel forced. As his films’ box office performance declined, he avoided such twists—until The Visit. Brian Hiatt notes that Shyamalan “reintroduced his signature this-wasn’t-the-movie-you-thought-it-was twist.” This decision may have contributed to studios rejecting the film; when Shyamalan presented a rough cut in Los Angeles, “every major Hollywood studio passed” on it.
Fearing he might lose the $5 million he had borrowed against his home and that this project could mark the end of his career, Shyamalan re-edited the film. Hiatt reveals that after presenting a “new cut” to Universal, horror expert Jason Blum agreed to produce it. The film ultimately grossed $98 million.
Despite the failures of Lady in Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth, and Glass, Shyamalan’s belief in a “fundamentally kind” universe might hold some truth.
2. Invaders from Mars
William Cameron Menzies’s 1953 sci-fi film Invaders from Mars relied on several low-cost props, such as a car headlight repurposed as a space gun and the set decorator’s personal glass table. Among the most unusual props were ordinary “white condoms,” used to mimic “cave wall bubbles.” As John “J.J.” Johnson notes in Cheap Tricks and Class Acts: Special Effects, Makeup and Stunts from the Films of the Fantastic Fifties, filmmakers of the 1950s were remarkably inventive in finding ways to save money.
1. Plan 9 from Outer Space
The ingenuity of low-budget horror film crews is also evident in Ed Wood’s 1957 cult favorite Plan 9 from Outer Space. Given its title, the film naturally features scenes of alien spacecraft. Contrary to popular belief, Wood did not use car hubcaps for the spaceships. Instead, as Retro Fan’s April 2020 issue reveals, he utilized “plastic model kits of flying saucers.”
