10 Great Low Budget Movies Which Cleaned Up At The Box Office

4. Rocky

Movie goers love a good rags to riches story - they allow us to spend a couple of hours vicariously succeeding in life and give us hope that we too might one day rise above our ordinary lives and achieve something extraordinary. Few examples of this theme have proven to be more successful than Rocky, the 1976 boxing drama written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, before he went fully gung-ho and action hero on us. Rocky Balboa's rise from street hoodlum to world champion boxer is interspersed with his relationships with those around him, and in this sense is as much a melodrama as it is a sporting film. It certainly has its moment of Golden Age Hollywood schmaltz but the fight scenes are well executed (although not so much when compared to the true boxing movie masterpiece, Raging Bull). Budget: $1.075 million Box office: $225 million