Good Movie on Sleep Paralysis

There's a movie on Netflix that came out last year on the subject of sleep paralysis that's very much worth watching. I don't seem to have it much anymore, but I went through a lot of this 15 years ago. What cured me? It sounds silly, but I noticed that in certain esoteric writings it was suggested that people who were trying to have an out of body experience during meditation should make sure the head of their bed was pointed north. (Something to do with the magnetic north and magnetic fields in your brain I guess.) I figured that if this would help people induce an OBE, then pointing your bed in a different direction might help stop them. My dad (who lived across town at the time) and I both had this problem of SP plus having nightmares. After checking with a compass, I found that both of us had our beds pointing north. I reoriented them to the east, and our problems pretty much went away for good. Strange, but true. The movie is called The Nightmare:

The Nightmare

Charles Laughton - I, Claudius (Must See)

You may have heard that back in 1937 Charles Laughton and Merle Oberon were to have the starring roles in a production of Robert Graves novel—I, Claudius. Claudius, the 4^th emperor of Rome, suffered from a nervous condition that caused his head to shake, and he stuttered badly. He also was described as having weak knees that would sometimes buckle on him. Oh, and he drooled when he got excited or nervous. The royal family kept him out of the public eye as much as possible, so great was their embarrassment of him. While they considered Claudius to be a bit of a dolt because of his nervous habits, he was actually somewhat bright and ended up being one of the few halfway decent human beings Rome ever had as emperor. He built the aqueducts and canals that are still there today and wrote his own autobiography among other achievements.

The film halted production after only a few weeks due to Oberon having been injured in a car crash. There are those who claim that Laughton was happy to use this as an excuse to get out of the movie because he didn't like the way he played the role of Claudius, and no doubt it must have been difficult to get the stutter right. (Actually he stammered in it rather than stutter, though he still did a fine job.) Other sources say that he had finally gotten the characterization down correctly and was happy with it after the first couple of weeks.

All of the original footage is still around, and a documentary in 1962 called The Epic That Never Was shows most of the footage. Here's a scene from it where Caligula has been murdered and now the senate must decide whether to allow this buffoon, Claudius (the last adult survivor of the royal family), to become their emperor. As far as I'm concerned this is one of the greatest scenes ever filmed. Surely this would have been the role of Charles Laughton's life, even more so than that of Captain Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty two years earlier

The Lost Patrol

Philip MacDonald wasn't the great writer his grandpa George was, but he was pretty decent. One of John Ford's early films (1934), The Lost Patrol, was based on one of Philip's novels called Patrol. Someone has posted it at YouTube now. You can see it here: The Lost Patrol

The Bishop's Wife

Looking for a good Christmas holiday movie? The Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life, Scrooge, Miracle on 34th Street—those have been the big Christmas movies traditionally. Try The Bishop's Wife. I don't know why this movie hasn't been as popular as those others. It stars Cary Grant as an angel trying to help out a Bishop and his wife over the holidays. A great movie! Now playing at Hulu.