Ah yes, the original 1977 Star Wars, not episode IV, not “A New Hope”, just a low budget SciFi film with a bunch of relatively unknown actors as stars and a director who’s last movie was about hot rods in the early sixties. The version where Han shot first because he was a rogue, a smuggler, one who operated outside the law.
Star Wars was a B movie, complete with the Wilhelm scream, and we loved it.
Actually back then ten million dollars wasn’t really a low budget, even in 1977 dollars, which were worth about ten times as much as the present dollar.
But they did film in the UK in order to save money on the production.
A big chunk of that money was spent on post production, which was innovative special effects at the time. The money wasn’t spent upfront, which was obvious by the sets and props. 🙂 They also avoided spending money on big name stars like Kurt Russel or Cindy Williams, who were some of the early choices for Han Solo and Princess Leia.
Star Wars had the B movie feel, and the studio wasn’t expecting much from it. Perhaps a modest return on investment over the long haul. They were throwing Lucas a bone because American Graffiti had done reasonably well. Nobody, including Lucas, expected it to do as well as it did.
Well, dressing up real firearms as blasters was certainly a good move on their part.
Oh, here’s a really low budget sci-fi movie.
http://www.ascensionthemovie.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/FreshGroundPictures#p/a/u/1/K0Gyheg8Djs
Yes, I have the DVD.