ChampDavSlim
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Sarita Rafferty
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Fulke
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Michael_Elliott
Life Returns (1935) ** (out of 4)Dr. John Kendrick (Onslow Stevens) is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life but everyone laughs at him. This pretty much forces him out of the profession and before long his wife dies and his young son ends up in a gang where his life goes all wrong. Pretty soon a chance comes along and the doctor can prove his scientific theories.LIFE RETURNS is often confused as to being a Universal horror movie but that's not the case. Thsi was just distributed by Universal for some reason but it wasn't actually produced by them. Another bit of confusion is that Valerie Hobson has a brief role here and we know she appeared in Universal's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and WEREWOLF IN London the same year. If you're expecting a flat out horror film then you'll certainly be disappointed as this is more family drama mixed with science fiction.The weirdest thing about this ultra weird movie is the fact that it tries to do so many things yet it isn't successful at any of them. For starters, this is a personal drama dealing with the doctor losing everything while he battles to try and prove himself. The film also rips off the Our Gang shorts with the story of the son who falls in with a group of misfits. I'm really not sure why Universal would want to distribute this film because even for a "C" studio this thing would be pretty embarrassing.Onslow, who would eventually appear in HOUSE OF DRAULA, at least manages a decent performance and I'd also argue that Hobson is better here than in the two Universal horror movies she appeared in. The problem is that there's just nothing overly interesting here. This was based on the life of Robert E. Cornish but I'll let you look up what he did and how. As far as the film goes, LIFE RETURNS briefly hits the "horror" genre with the doctor trying to bring life back to a dog but the weirdness level of the picture keeps it somewhat entertaining.
Red-Barracuda
I was surprised to learn that this was a product of Universal Studios because it looked very much more like a product of Poverty Row. Despite what you could reasonably expect, it isn't one of Universal's horror cycle though, it's barely even sci-fi either and is mostly a melodrama. It's about a doctor who continues to try and develop a formula that will re-animate the dead. He eventually succeeds in bringing his son's dog back to life.The film tries to suggest that we will witness footage from an operation that indeed did bring a dog back from the dead. Apparently a Dr. Cornish devised this procedure and tested it successfully. He stars in this one and it's footage of his surgery we see in the finale. In reality the dog may have been briefly resuscitated but it died very soon afterwards. Of course the movie doesn't show this! On the whole this is an okay medical drama that could probably have been told in a more exciting manner. On a side note, I did find it quite amusing that the paperboy in the film used his dog to carry his newspapers in a little dog cart, the lazy little git.
MARIO GAUCI
The presence in the cast of Onslow Stevens (later the nominal lead in 1945's HOUSE OF Dracula) and Valerie Hobson (who starred in both BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and WEREWOLF OF London that same year) is the only indication that this obscure curio was a product of Universal Studios during their golden age as Hollywood's top purveyors of chills and thrills. However, despite this being (relatively speaking) a "mad doctor with a back-from-the-dead scheme" scenario, the end result is far removed from the entertainment value and artistic quality one usually associates with that celebrated horror cycle. Indeed, the film ends up being closer in feel to a Warner Bros-type of social document crossed with a Hal Roach "Our Gang" flick and directed by exploitationer Dwain Esper! Unfortunately, it plays far less amusingly than that bizarre concoction sounds! Stevens falls out with his two fellow students (including real-life scientist Dr. Robert E. Cornish, who the previous year had actually accomplished the life-giving experiment that inspired the movie in the first place!) over financing their project and goes to work for a commercial firm which, however, soon drops him when his continuous attempts grow costlier and more fruitless by the day. This rejection makes him give up his well-paying daytime practice of treating elderly socialites of non-existent ailments and his consequent impoverishment drives wife Hobson to an early grave and son George Breakston to a juvenile court! The latter eventually takes to the road with his pet dog and joins a gang of streetwise kids who live on their wiles in procuring whatever food they can from 'providential' neighbors! Needless to say, this situation ends badly with the dog being caught by the authorities and subsequently gassed and one of the kids getting hurt in the attempt to free the mutt.Distressed by failing his son yet again in curing his wounded friend (claiming to be 'washed-up'), Stevens contrives to set up an operation in which Breakston's dead dog is revived, thus proving his initial theory after all! As silly as it sounds, the footage depicting this is actually authentic and integrated into the storyline by having Stevens narrate the ongoing procedure carried out by Cornish and his colleagues (similarly portraying themselves) to a group of gathered medicos – something which he himself could not accomplish because his ostensible patrons did not want to fork out any more dough on some all-important apparatus! Being a lifelong animal lover, this sequence (showing Cornish giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the dog!) could not fail to stir me and easily emerges as the film's highlight…even if LIFE RETURNS itself as a whole proved too amateurish and bland for a Universal horror product! For the record, uncredited co-director James Hogan would later make yet another lesser (but more typical) example along similar 'revivification' lines i.e. THE MAD GHOUL (1943).
sbibb1
Surprisingly good and well acted film about a scientist (Onslow Stevens) who spends years of his life working on a formula to bring the dead back to life. His goal overshadows other important things in his life, like his wife, job and son (George Breakston).The film was made in 1935, but was not released until 1937. The footage of the operation is actual footage performed by Dr. Robert E. Cornish, in which he brings a dead dog back to life. One is left to think today that if the experiment had really been successful that Dr. Cornish would have gone down in history.Valerie Hobson plays the doctors friend. This is years before her later humiliation, when her husband, John Profumo, an elected British official, had an affair with a chorus girl.
