SCI-FI ON THE CHEAP

Want to make a science fiction movie but don't have $150 million to spend? These budget-conscious brain-benders show you how it's done

By Don Kaye
Special to MSN Movies

Summer is nearly upon us, which means that a whole slew of blockbusters are coming to movie screens. A good chunk of them, as always, are sci-fi epics filled to bursting with special effects, CGI and massive sequences of action and destruction that send production costs rocketing into the atmosphere. It reportedly cost $150 million to get the Enterprise out of mothballs for the new "Star Trek" reboot, while the producers of "Terminator Salvation" are likely praying that fans will "be back" in theaters to make good on the picture's alleged $200 million price tag.

To be sure, all that money is usually on the screen if the filmmaking team has done their jobs. Just in the last 15 years alone, we've seen sights on celluloid that could rival the imaginations of the greatest science fiction writers. But the genre itself was never just about skyscraper-sized alien spaceships or cloned dinosaurs running amok or entire cities being vaporized before your eyes. No, sci-fi has always been first and foremost about ideas, whether about our place in the universe, the meaning of time, or the evolution of humanity. And sometimes those ideas don't need the equivalent of a small country's gross national product to get their message across (case in point: the Mexican cyber-drama "Sleep Dealer," now in limited release).

Look, we enjoy watching planets being destroyed and 100-foot-tall robots duking it out as much as anyone -- we live for it, in fact. And a lot of those movies even offer up some food for thought, too. But here are 10 science fiction films that truly engage your brain and/or your heart, while still managing to provide suspense, terror, and thrills -- and all for under $5 million each, with seven of them coming in for under a million. In fact, the sum cost of our 10 picks comes out to less than $8 million. That's probably not even the catering bill on "Transformers 2."

"Timecrimes" (2008)

Budget: $2.5 million

Worth the money? A clever and mind-stretching time-travel yarn with no special effects, four characters and one basic location, this Spanish-made movie plays more like a noirish psychological thriller than "Back to the Future." Everyman lead Hector (Karra Elejalde) shows that even the most mundane person can't resist the temptation to keep going back to "fix" things, even if it means spitting out copies of himself like a cosmic Xerox. Writer-director-actor Nacho Vigalondo has crafted an airtight little puzzle here, which we can only hope the inevitable remake doesn't muck up with empty razzle-dazzle or a hunkier leading man.

Savings: The film's three key props -- a pair of scissors, a set of binoculars and a roll of gauze -- cost a total of $95.

"Last Night" (1999)

Budget: $2 million (reported)

Worth the money? Writer-director-actor Don McKellar (who later wrote the screenplay for another apocalyptic saga, 2008's "Blindness") zeroes in on a fascinating question: What would you do if the world was going to disappear in just six hours? Bypassing explanations and images of mass destruction, McKellar follows seven people around as they criss-cross each other and prepare in their own way for the end. Haunting, elegant and even funny (it's Canadian, after all), "Last Night" is the perfect antidote to big-budget buffoonery like "The Day After Tomorrow."

Savings: How do you show the end of everything on just $2 million? Simple: You don't. A few empty, trashed Toronto streets set the tone very nicely.

"Cube" (1997)

Budget: $365,000

Worth the money? Canadian director Vincenzo Natali made a stunning debut with this metaphysical thriller, in which a handful of people find themselves in a giant, prison-like structure made of interlocking rooms -- many of which hold deadly, fatal traps that can be tripped by one wrong step. "Cube" expertly weaves some big, allegorical ideas into its suspenseful narrative, hinting at grand concepts and images without showing us all that much. Natali continues to make provocative sci-fi films on smaller budgets, but none have been as effective yet as this.

Savings: One room with one entrance was built on a Toronto soundstage, with colored wall panels swapped in and out to give the impression of many different rooms in a vast labyrinth.

"Hardware" (1990)

Budget: $1.5 million (reported)

Worth the money? Derivative and a little overly stylized, director Richard Stanley's feature debut still packs a nasty punch. A young Dylan McDermott plays a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic world who finds some scrap metal and brings it home to his artist girlfriend (Stacey Travis). Unbeknownst to them, the junk comes from a discarded government robot programmed to kill -- and to reassemble itself with whatever is lying around. Gory, visceral and claustrophobic, "Hardware" is very much of its time but a nice example of cyberpunk on a budget.

Savings: Like "Cube," "Hardware" takes place in one basic location (an apartment building), and most of it in just one apartment.

"THX 1138" (1971)

Budget: $777,000 (according to legend)

Worth the money? One of the easiest ways to make a feature is to win a grant to do it. That's what USC film student George Lucas did when his short, "Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB," was expanded thanks to a competition sponsored by Warner Bros., USC and UCLA. Of course, the studio didn't exactly give Lucas a ton of cash, but he still managed to make a creepy and oppressive vision of an underground totalitarian society where sex and love are forbidden. Lucas continued his budget-conscious ways a little longer with "Star Wars," which cost just $9 million.

Savings: Tunnels for San Francisco's unfinished BART subway system stood in for Lucas' nightmarish future world.

"Mad Max" (1979)

Budget: $400,000 Australian (approximately $300,000 U.S.)

Worth the money? This little Australian thriller was a bargain, all right: It launched the careers of both Mel Gibson and director George Miller (who was previously a doctor), not to mention one of the best action/sci-fi franchises of the 1980s. While sequel "The Road Warrior" is considered the series high point, "Mad Max" is almost as intense and effective, with some of the most breathtaking car chases ever filmed. Miller's violent dystopian saga has been widely imitated and continues to have an influence on the sci-fi and action genres.

Savings: Many of the cars in the film were repainted and used again throughout the shoot; Miller's co-writer and producer, Byron Kennedy, edited the picture in his bedroom on a home-built editing machine.

"Dark Star" (1974)

Budget: $60,000

Worth the money? Before he gave us "Halloween" and "The Thing," director John Carpenter was yet another struggling film student who somehow scraped together $6,000 with partner Dan O'Bannon (who later wrote "Alien") to shoot a 45-minute short about a crew of loser "space hippies" piloting a dysfunctional ship through space looking for "unstable" planets. Exploitation producer Jack Harris saw the quirky, hilarious little picture -- which features an alien menace that's essentially a beach ball with claws -- and gave Carpenter and O'Bannon enough money to stretch it to feature length, add more effects and blow the whole thing up from 16mm to 35mm.

Savings: A scene in which astronaut Pinback (played by O'Bannon) hangs out of an elevator was filmed horizontally in a hallway, with a camera dolly standing in for the bottom of the car. And the alien really was a beach ball.

"Pi" (1998)

Budget: $60,000

Worth the money? "The Wrestler" director Darren Aronofsky made his debut with this dense, eerie psychological thriller about a young researcher who discovers a mathematical constant that is either the key to the stock market or a Hasidic code to summon God. Shooting in and around Coney Island, Aronofsky funded the movie with $100 investments from everyone he knew. When the picture was bought by Artisan Entertainment, the investors all got $150 back and we got the start of one of the best directorial careers of the last 20 years.

Savings: Aronofsky's mom did all the catering for the film. We're sure she gave her son a nice discount.

"Automatons" (2007)

Budget: $35,000

Worth the money? Writer-director James Felix McKenney's black-and-white micro-epic about a post-apocalyptic war between robots and human survivors is an homage to the '50s sci-fi movies he grew up watching, complete with fuzzy images, ultra-chintzy special effects and deliberate (sometimes too deliberate) pacing. Often surreal, sometimes too crudely made for its own good, "Automatons" is not for everyone. But McKenney's heart is in the right place, and diehard sci-fi fans will appreciate the references and imagery.

Savings: "Automatons" was shot in one room with a four-person crew, while most of the robot miniatures were shot on a tabletop in McKenney's apartment.

"Primer" (2004)

Budget: $7,000

Worth the money? Shane Carruth was a mathematician and engineer before making this complex, esoteric little flick about time travel, and it shows: There are long stretches of the movie in which you'd better have a degree in physics to know what's going on. But that's part of its charm. Carruth also stars as one of two inventors who accidentally build a time machine, and they always talk like real science geeks would, without dumbing down the dialogue for an attention-deprived audience. "Primer" takes place in suburban garages and drab Dallas industrial parks, proving that big ideas don't always need big budgets.

Savings: Why farm out the work when you can do it yourself? Carruth directed, produced, wrote, shot, edited, scored and co-starred in the movie -- which sounds so exhausting that it's no wonder he's taken a five-year break.

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Have you seen any of these? Will you? What other low-budget films do you recommend? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

Don Kaye covers films, TV and entertainment for MSN.com, and passes along the savings to you.