TINOS (Greece), June 16: A French movie just completed in Greece includes 1982 footage of cinema legend Orson Welles warning of a terrorist strike ‘blowing out’ New York, the film’s director said.

Pointing to weapons parity between the United States and the Soviet Union, Welles predicted that nuclear proliferation and destruction ‘could appear from the back door of small countries with atomic capacity, perhaps Pakistan, Israel or South Africa’.

“There could be a terrorist who would blow out New York ... and from there, there would be a chain reaction,” he said.

The prescient comments by Welles, who shot to fame in 1938 with a prank radio broadcast of the “War of the Worlds” novel by H.G. Wells, come from a 15-minute interview he gave three years before his death to young director Jacques Grand-Jouan.

The interview will now be part of Grand-Jouan’s latest film, “Lucifer et Moi” (Lucifer and I). —AFP