Nostradamus 1999

The next time you feel overwhelmed by apocalypse hysteria coming at you over the media, rent this film and sit back and have a good laugh--this film forcasts massive worldwide earthquakes in 1988, world war by 1994 (27 years of it!), apocalypse by 1999, blah, blah, blah....This is a magnificent illustration of how selling doom works as business, and having these predictions to watch from the comfort of the late '90s is a marvelous tonic against wild claims made by all manner of 'experts.' Have some high-cholesterol popcorn (with lots of salt), fire up the ozone-depleting air-conditioning, and let this film fill you in on how the world ended! Enjoy!

Every time the world faces a disaster, somebody intones, self-righteously, "Nostradamus PREDICTED it..." Be it a flood, an earthquake, an assassination, or anything in-between, the sixteenth century French cleric wrote about it, somehow, in the midst of his hundreds of ambiguous quatrains. His writings have become the nonbelievers' Book of Daniel and the Revelations of St. John the Divine, reference works almost occult in stature about the future of the human race.

As a potential source for a 'cheap buck', his writings are invaluable, as they can so easily be twisted to mean ANYTHING, so low-budget documentaries pop up frequently with "definitive" interpretations, and THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW is, perhaps, the most famous of the lot. Best-known for having Orson Welles, looking suitably Satanic, as the Host/Narrator, pouring over ancient documents and looking up at the camera as if he were 'channeling' Nostradamus' spirit, himself (Once a ham actor, always a ham actor...), the documentary jumps to stock footage of natural disasters, the Nazis, Hollywood renditions of Napoleon, and newsreels of John and Robert Kennedy, all the while stating how dictators ('Anti-Christs'), Popes, Kings and Presidents' lives and deaths were foreseen with unerring accuracy.

The problem arises when the 'future' is predicted, using his writings. Whether our world survives or falls into chaos, there has NEVER been a 'fortuneteller' who predicted what lies ahead correctly. It is only AFTER the fact that one can 'interpret' the writings to 'fit' what has happened. It reminds one of the old joke about fortunetellers...if they are so accurate, why aren't they all rich from winning lotteries, horse races, and such? From Nostradamus to contemporary 'visionaries' like Jeanne Dixon, what HASN'T happened that was 'predicted' as coming to pass always trips them up...while their supporters quickly offer excuses that we simply 'misinterpreted' what was foreseen.

So don't face what lies ahead with fear, when watching THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW...just enjoy it for the cheesy spectacle it is, and perhaps mourn the fact that non-film fans may remember Orson Welles more from his overripe performance, here, than for CITIZEN KANE or TOUCH OF EVIL.

Nostradamus probably predicted THAT, too...

This movie and I have a very interesting history. I first heard of Nostradomus when I watched an "In Search Of.." special on his life and times. They said he predicted King Henry's death in a jousting tournament and all kinds of other things. I remember watching this film in the 1980s and it scared me to death, especially the part in the end about the third Anti-Christ, the evil Warlord in a blue turban who will start WWIII. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, I read an article that said he was the third anti-Christ and it scared me even more. I served in Desert Storm with the National Guard and I can remember all the time I was over there I thought the world was going to end just like it showed in this ridiculous film, I about drove myself crazy worrying over nothing! My father always used to tell me that I was foolish even thinking about Nostrodomus. Well anyway, I read a book on this prophet by a man named James Randi and he pointed out that Nostrodomus was really a fraud. His predictions are so vague that they can be twisted and turned to mean almost anything. All right, he talks about something called Hister in his predictions, in this movie they try to make it out like he predicted the rise of Adolf Hitler. But if you do a little bit of studying, you find Hister was the name of a river in France! Friends there is nothing to worry about! In the wake of these terrorist attacks, people have tried to make it out like he predicted those as well. Dont make the mistake I did, its not even worth thinking about. Orson Welles has a great narrator's voice and makes the story come alive, but just watch it and laugh. Looking back, I feel so foolish that I let this film frighten me so much, I should have listened to my father.

Firstly, let's talk about the movie:

The movie worked professionally with the past historical facts and linked it with Nostradamus' quatrains, facts like The rise and fall of Napoleon, The rise and fall of Hitler, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, John and Robert Kennedy and the fall of Shah Ali Bahlawy of Iran (Persia as Nostradamus said) and the rise of AyatoAllah Al Khomini .. the interpretations are so good concerning the past and the historical events but the future events (keep in mind that the movie was released in 1981 which is more than a quarter of a century ago) like the destructive earthquakes that will destroy San Francesco, The famine after the coming of the great comet (The movie mentioned the Halley comet which passed near the earth on 1986), and the hilarious interpretation about the third king of terror (Anti-Christ as the movie said) which was shown as a no more than a clown wearing strange outfit which reminds us with the Prince of Persia (lol) as to convince us that the coming king of terror will come from the middle east and will be a Muslim and will start the WWIII between 1994 and 1999!! Hurraaaaay !! of course all these interpretations are fake and didn't happen at all !!

Now let's talk about Nostradamus .. the real one:

All the historical facts and scenes in the movie featuring Nostradamus' life and death are absolutely true and historically authenticated .. the quatrains mentioned in the movie are almost true (with some mistakes from the translation of the quatrains from French to English) What is not correct are the interpretations.. for example:

• Orson Wells said that Nostradamus mentioned Moselini (Brute, empty minded, ... etc) but there's no evidence that Moselini was mentioned in the prophecies of Nostradamus

• Nostradamus didn't mention the word Anti-Christ describing Napoleon or Hitler or even the 3rd yet unknown king of terror (By the way, Nostradamus said that his name will be MABUS, he'll ignite a massive destructive war (maybe the WWIII) which will last for 27.5 years) .. the word Anti-Christ is not valid here as they are all not anti-Christs, the Anti-Christ is only one in the world history who'll appear at the end of time .. He didn't come yet .. he has special figure and characteristics known by the Christians and Muslims .. Napoleon was described in his era and since then as an (The Enemy of the Christ) when he insulted the Pope and took the imperial crown from him to put it on his own head, Hitler was described as (The Enemy of the man kind) when he insulted the cross (A Christian holy symbol) and changed it's shape to satisfy the Nazi's propaganda, the 3rd king of terror didn't come yet so how we can describe him as an anti-Christ ?!

• Killing and torturing the Jews is a crime made by Hitler but that does make him Anti-Semitic and not an Anti-Christ

• The Quatrain talking about the 3rd king of terror is (Century X Q72):

The year 1999, seventh month, From the sky will come a great King of Terror: To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

so The 3rd king of terror can't be Muslim nor Arabian at all .. as Nostradamus described him He's a king (Remember the American dynasty! Bush the Senior and Bush the Junior?!) and he'll come in the seventh month of 1999 (Remeber the American Presidancy elections: Exit William Clinton and Enter G. W. Bush ??!!), he'll return the legacy of Ghengis Khan the king of Mongols (Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, he's quite controlling Pakistan by controlling Musharaf, and is threatening Iran and wants to invade it and also he's tampering with China) ..don't all that remind us with the way of Ghengis Khan) .. The quatrain ends by(before and after war reigns with good luck): so imagine who's luckier than Bush to win all the wars and to destroy his county's resources and economy just to provide more and more money and funds to his infernal military war craft which reigns the world by now .. The King of terror's name as Nostradamus said is MABUS (if we reverse the letter M upside down to be W, transfer the A to be H (very similar 2 letters) and put it in the end of the word then like a magic MABUS will be W BUSH .. VOILA .. got him!!

• The Anti-Christ is not a Christian or a Muslim as they both believe in Jessus (Eissa in Islam) and can't be against him

• I agree on the concept that Nostradamus was a strange and unrepeatable phenomenon that he really could see the future and the evidence for that is his prophecies which that are coming true day after day and era after era .. what I don't agree on is the selection, changing and manipulating his prophecies to serve political or Zionist ideas or purposes .. that the 3rd King or terror is a Muslim and death will come from the countries of Islam .. and etc with all that unreal and illogic mambo gambo ... we should consider and make up our minds to know the real hidden truth ...

Sorry Ors *** Lo'ay

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.