A lot of fun.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is a piece of comedy gold. Unfortunately none of the cast stuck around to make a sequel to this madness.We see from the very beginning what kind of quality movie it is. Looking at the 5 minute long credit sequence ( for a cast of about 6 people), the blaring one man band electric guitar. He found a good riff and by god he is gonna stick with it.... over and over and over...... But he does find other riffs through the film, which he repeats over and over and overWe are introduced to the 'dinosaurs' early on. Hard to really know what they are as they seem a combination of sock puppets and images recorded by holding a cam to the screen of old movies, saving them as a .bmp, jumping on photoshop and getting that auto-select option, paste them into the film and move them from side to side. What you get is just a pixelated mess. Even the 'actors' ( mostly a bunch of hunched hooded smudges waving at the camera) glide across screen in 8 bit Nintendo graphics style pixellisation.We then get a series of cut scenes of random shapes and colours, pylons, more sock puppets, and vague non descriptive backgrounds. If it wasn't for the narrator, there would be no sense whatsoever. I'm guessing it was about a futuristic arena or something.Then we have a discussion between monsters/aliens or something. I dont really know because in 'digitizing' their voices, there is no way it can be deciphered. Its just electronic incomprehensible drivel and muttering. Then suddenly you hear a word or two that can be understood. Some is subtitled, but its spoken too quick and the plot is so convoluted that its impossible to follow unless you watch it more times than any sane person would. After about 3 minutes of Alien conversation I realized trying to understand the plot was a mission in hopelessness and relied on the narrator to make sense of it. But I wasn't going to give up and press that all too alluring skip forward button. Some other points of this gem ( Too many to mention really )The camera zooms into random spots. Spots on the floor, Spots on the wall. Sometimes its chicken bones or coral. Sometimes its a rock. But most of the time it seems completely random. You cant tell what they are or why they are important, but hey his camera had a zoom option so why not use it? The editor also left in some great lingering shots of these red smudges on the wall, which I appreciated. The one of two human-like guy's who do have lines ( The newzealander ), and the only character who can be understood is badly dubbed with the speech not matching his words.The other makes Tommy Wiseau and Adam Baugh seem like real talents; his accent changes whenever there is a new scene or is monotone and he mumbles. He also looks stoned the whole movie. But we do get some lovely split second shots of him standing there like a plank staring into nothing, which is nice because he is a real looker (he isn't) Sometimes his makeup is so overdone that he looks like a zombie but it could also have been overuse of lighting. Because all the 'actors' were probably filmed in blue screen or something, they change heights and perspectives in each scene. Of course you can see their outlines, sometimes an arm is edited out or they turn invisible for a second.... great stuffMovie stops when the narrator speaks, and you get some nice images of... err..... things, some which bellow smoke at inconsistent speeds. Actually these cut scenes make up about 30% of the film. I cant judge the plot or do a spoiler alert because I am not exactly sure what happened; Something about finding some rare alien dinosaur to fight in the arena. Somewhat redeeming qualitiesFor a low budget film costume and props are not terrible. They are still bad, but are not terrible.The Lighting guy did some good work on some scenes. Most was filmed in a cave, and he tried to reflect every different colour light off every surface he could. The editor took this and it was like crack, as he stuffed as many of these into the production cycle as the time limit would allow, about 200 or so cut scenes. I guess they also hired a smoke machine, which was used almost every scene. Big budget. Some nice shots of the forest. Nice as in a welcome break from the rest of the film. Not nice in that although the cameraperson knew how to zoom, he/she certainly didn't know how to focus.I've been on a bit of a bad movie binge at the moment, and this is worse than Birdemic. This is by far the worst movie ever made. It is basically what happens if a stoner film student with a basic knowledge of photoshop and an interest in Asimov, hires a smoke machine and some party lights, calls his dealer and ten of his stoner buddies to do a magic mushroom hunt near a cave, whips out his camera on his phone and starts making a film. Takes it back to his dorm to do some 'editing' while still under the influence.To be honest if you watched an hour of 4 chords strummed on an electric guitar repeatedly while getting bombarded with random colours changing rapidly, it wouldn't be far removed from this. Its not as funny as Birdemic but its still worth a laugh until your ears bleed.

Alright, now, I have no idea if this was done as a deliberate comedy, a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek spoof of low budget sci-fi flicks, or if they were really trying to be serious here and just failed spectacularly, but Actium Maximus, this hideous, shrieking beast of a movie, is hard on the viewers' eyes and ears regardless of the filmmakers' intentions.My biggest gripe with the movie was *by far* the audio. I had an absurdly difficult time understanding the dialogue (unless it was subtitled, which it mercifully was in many scenes), because the robotic/futuristic distortion effects that were used for most of the alien voices rendered their speech almost completely unintelligible, not to mention an irritating chore to listen to. Tragically, most of the (painfully jargon-infested) dialogue in this movie is expositional and pretty much essential to understanding the story and the setting, so not being able to discern what's being said definitely is a problem. Or maybe not, considering that ---spoiler ahead--- *none* of the established conflicts and crises are actually resolved in any way whatsoever. Instead, the viewer is given the middle finger in the form of a "To Be Continued..." message after over an hour worth of nothing but buildup. Delicious.Of course, the other major issue are the visuals. I have absolutely nothing against "bad", low budget special effects in general, nor do I reject movies that deliberately opt for a cheap look, whether for comedic effect or just for style, but this disaster is where I have to draw the line. The effects in Actium Maximus are bad to the point of being a severe distraction and hindrance to the plot. After a while, I was no longer just sitting there, watching a movie, but actually squinting at the screen, guessing the contents of conversations and hoping to figure out what the hell the makers where trying to convey with the confusing, chaotic imagery.All in all, Actium Maximus is a nasty, messy and overall grating ordeal. It gets a 2 only for some of its genuinely impressive set miniatures, and the somewhat admirable guts the producers must have had for even attempting an ambitious project like this on such a damningly tight budget.

I got this movie as a buy one get one deal at troma.com with The Ruining (which isn't much better). The main reason I wanted it was to see Star Worms II: Attack of the Pleasure Pods, the DVD is a double feature with that movie. I really didn't know what Actium Maximus was at the time, and when I saw the trailer I got scared. It looked awful. But hey, what can you tell from the trailer? Well, apparently I could tell a lot. This movie honestly made no sens to me. The special effects were so terrible you cannot tell what in God's name is going on. I understand Mark HIcks had a extremely low budget, but come on. And it is sad, because in the interview he sounded like this was to be an epic film and meant more than you could see. But sadly, watching the film is one of the most boring hour and 15 minutes of anyone's life. It is so utterly painful to sit through. I really can't even explain the plot to you because I didn't understand it at all and I have sadly seen this film two times! Apparently they used some type of puppets for the "alien dinosaurs" like they did in Star Wars. But these special effects are awful, I can't stress it enough. And most of the time bad special effects are okay but this film needed them badly. It takes place on some futuristic planet where alien dinosaurs battle each other and bad actors in hooded sweatshirts run around, and they look like they are in the kkk. And some box with a blue light on it is the president. I know in the interview Mark Hicks said something about making this a television pilot, well, I can see why this didn't make it to CBS or NBC. There are two good things about this film. 1. the music is actually pretty good, it has an epic score that sticks in your head for days. And 2. Lloyd Kaufman's introduction is as always hilarious. Overall, don't waste your time but check out Star Worms II: Attack of the Pleasure Pods!

The DVD case reads, "With an intricate storyline not seen since The Dark Crystal, Actium Maximus is an ambitious and truly independent science fiction epic." Technically, that statement is true. The movie's ambitious, alright. Unfortunately, it's so independent that the budget is non-existent and the film ends up shooting itself in the scaly foot. The craftsmanship in Mark Hicks' sculpted landscapes and puppet armatures are diluted by the bad video quality and poor digital matting. Director Hicks, as Omni-Turor Axezun, looks like a jaundiced TV's Frank and delivers his lines with a mush mouth. Extras in rubber masks and robes wander around in front of a crudely pixel-lated blue screen. The robot dictator's dialog is delivered through clever subtitles that are in dire need of an editor and spellcheck. Thankfully, a few aspects of the film are purely positive:The music is cheerfully cheesy and boisterous. The occasional in-film newscasts slip in sharp social commentary about a non-existent society. And Axezun's lady friend certainly knows how to wear vinyl. With more money this might've been a minor classic, as it stands Actium Maximus is a noble failure.