8 Great Films Made On A Shoestring Budget

The first feature-length film from acclaimed and surreal director David Lynch, Eraserhead (1977) is reported to have cost only $10,000 to produce. With no money of his own, Lynch found the film's cost subsidised by a childhood friend called Jack Fisk, but there were still monetary issues that kept the film unfinished for years at a time.

Lynch took many measures to keep the production costs down, even delivering newspapers in the area.

All his hard work eventual paid off, of course, as Eraserhead, with its bizarre imagery, disturbing connotations and sinister undertones, proved to be a massive if critically divisive hit.

The film, for all its enduring iconography, is today regarded as a horror classic, and because of it Lynch has gone on to make a number of highly acclaimed films, from Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), as well as the classic series Twin Peaks.