5. Sam Raimi - Evil Dead (1981) - $375,000
When it was first announced that Marvel's web-slinging comic hero Spider-Man was being given the full-on cinematic treatment back in the early 2000's following the success of X-Men, some people were trying to figure out who the director, Sam Raimi, was. To some he was a decent B-movie type director, as close to geek royalty as Joss Whedon. Raimi had brought Xena, Princess Warrior and Hercules to the small screen, proving that New Zealand had the ability, locations and nerds (I say lovingly) to host both Lord of The Rings and the Matrix years later. Yet before Spider-Man, Xena and even Darkman, he had achieved cult-status with his infamous Evil Dead trilogy; three films that went from straight up horror film to spoof send-up of itself with talking skeletons, bad screen blending, and three immortal cinematic buzzwords; Klaatu birata nikto, itself a nod to 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', a classic sci-fi B-movie, recently remade with Keanu Reeves. But for Raimi it all started with a camera and a dream way back in the late 70's. And getting $375,000. That's a lot of begging for cash, which stalled or halted completion of the film many times. It helped that the dream involved his BFF Bruce Campbell willing to do anything on film. There were a lot of people, some grudgingly, willing to give a bunch of kids just out of high school a chance to go off to Tennessee to make a movie about evil spirits coming back to life in the middle of the woods. Raimi was a true innovator when it came to camera placement, chase scenes and the smash-cam to show the Evil's POV. And of course, they used lots of blood. Once completed, they were eventually able to sell the film to Dino De Laurentiis and a cult film was born. A couple of young kids followed their dreams to Hollywood and twenty years later Raimi took the helm of Spider-Man and made it his own while giving both his BFF and his Evil Dead car (1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88) cameos in the movie. Not bad for a couple of nerdy kids from Michigan.