It's hard to think of a James Cameron/Arnold Schwarzenegger action film as being 'independent' but this 1984 science fiction time-travel film is exactly that. Made on a comparatively small budget of $6.5m, the film was directed by the then-unproven Cameron and launched Arnie into super stardom, despite the fact he speaks only 18 lines of dialogue in the entire film. The film grossed over ten times its budget and spawned one of the most successful sequels of all time in the form of Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). The film proves that you don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to make a decent action film.
