Equinox (1970)
This started out as an amateur project by a group of kids in their twenties, led by one Dennis Muren. With a few friends and a handful of actors they made a horror/fantasy short called The Equinox: A Journey into the Supernatural, for just $6,500. They managed to find a distributor, who arranged shooting of additional footage, giving a total runtime of 1hr 22min - and a final budget of $8,000. He also shortened the name to just Equinox. The movie went on to take $849,000 at the box office.
What these kids achieved is incredible. There are so many anecdotes about how they did it (well worth looking up). The creature modelling and stop-motion rivals that of Harryhausen. Scenes where a giant is played by an actor are done with forced perspective (I still cannot see how it was done, given the overall composition of some shots). No surprise that Muren went on to become a hugely successful mainstream visual effects artist, winning nine Oscars for his work with Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron.
Equinox is often hailed as a major influence on Sam Raimi's original Evil Dead trilogy, with an ancient book translated by a professor (whilst staying at his remote woodland cabin!) which accidentally summons demons, narration via an old school open-reel tape recorder, mountain-top castles, winged demons, portals to other dimensions, and a hint that maybe things don't end too well for the hero. Raimi never acknowledged seeing Equinox, but original makeup artist Tom Sullivan said he himself had seen it a couple of times before he worked on the first Evil Dead film. Whatever the truth of it, Equinox is an absorbing watch, whether you're a horror fan in general, an Evil Dead fan in particular, or just interested in the history of visual effects. 7/10
