The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Orson Welles presents this docudrama about the life and times of 16th century French astrologer and physician Nostradamus, who has since passed into legend. He was reputed to have predicted(through the use of coded writings to safeguard against the church) future events like the rises of Napolean and Hitler, the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Lincoln & Kennedy, and the invention of the airplane and moon rockets, among other things. A bit corny now, even if Welles does a nice job here, but viewer may get the feeling that he really doesn't believe anything he's saying, which kills the whole point of watching! Stars like Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, and even Brad Crandall were the best at this sort of thing, with "In Search Of..." & "Unsolved Mysteries" doing far better jobs presenting the same material, in a more even-handed way. Not yet on DVD, though is on YouTube.

I watched that movie soon after 9/11 and everyone saw Bin Laden as the Muslim warlord.It is old, let's face it, but it predicted an earthquake in San Francisco around 1988, something wrong when the Halley comet ran by in April 1986 (Chernobyl disaster) and an attack on New-York by Muslims but the movie aid it was going to be a nuclear attack. It also predicts natural catastrophes (Tsunami? Hurricane Katrina? El Nino?) around the time of a conflict between America and the Muslim world. It's not a hundred percent precise but as far as interpretations of Nostradamus' predictions go, it is the most accurate I found.But you really don't want to watch that with the lights off. The horror of the Nazi camps so well described and the future it predicts is so grim and yet close to the truth that it's quite scary.

I remember this being on Cinemax all the time back in the early 80s, I taped it, and when I was in high school, I mentioned it to a teacher, and she had me bring it in and the class watched it, and then the school library borrowed it and made a copy. I wonder if they still have it, they should be ashamed of themselves if they show it to any more classes, I was just a teenager, but these were educated adults taking this nonsense seriously. I saw it again recently, I remember being absolutely mesmerized by it at the time, I'm almost embarrassed that I was ever naive enough to take this for anything more than base entertainment. The whole production is just so cheap and silly looking, and most of the predictions haven't panned out, I'm sure Nostrodamus was a slick talking con man of his time, sort of like Sylvia Brown now, just say a lot of vague things and hope people overlook it when your wrong. All of that being said, Orson Wells has a great presence, and he almost makes this tripe seem plausible, if you close your eyes. If you saw it way back when, it's kind of fun to revisit it and goof on it, but you've never seen it, there's no need to.

First off, on the issue of "Hister". Yes "Hister" refers to a river, but it also referred to Hitler. Many of Nostradamus's quatrains had mutiple meanings and referred to more than one event at different times in history...this is because history repeats itself many times. Nostradamus did forsee the end of the world, but he didn't forsee it happening anywhere near anyone's lifetime...in fact, it won't end until millions of years after the human race has become extinct. His quatrains are mis-interpreted on a massive scale. The documentary is incorrect about his prediction on 1999. It had nothing to do with the Antichrist. Although, he does predict a third Antichrist. The Antichrist is not going to come out immediately as an evil person. The Antichrist will seem to be a peace-maker in the Middle-East and will even receive the Nobel Peace Prize. When the time comes, he will make a drastic turn around and invade Europe. Although, the film was somewhat accurate in its description of how New York City will be destroyed as outlined by Nostradamus. It was actually correct in identifying Century 3 Quatrain 84 with the devastation of New York City. Although, that quatrain does not refer to the events of September 11, 2001...it still has yet to come to pass. It is a very disturbing quatrain which predicts the end of New York City. A neutron bomb will be placed in New York harbor...it will destroy the Statue of Liberty and a massive number of lives. Century 3 Quatrain 84The great city will soon be quite deserted, not a single one of the inhabitants will remain. Wall, sex, temple and virgin violated, people will die from the sword, fire, plague and cannon shot.