Life Returns (1935)

I love this movie so much

From my favorite movies..

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This film shows you that you can be the worst parent in the world and everything turns out okay as long as you can brings your kid's pets back to life. But not his mother.After a head scratching beginning which goes on about some guy who brought a dog back to life, we get so see smug graduate Kendrick ditching his mates in order to join some corporation whom he believes will give him the dough in order for him to realise his life's dream, and that dream is conquering death. The thing is, business is business and when the company ditch him for spending too much (they offer him a job making hair restoring brushes instead) he goes a bit nuts, stops practising medicine, then sits around all day feeling sorry for himself.You the audience instead should be feeling sorry for his son Danny. Now, Danny's a bright kid with a dog sidekick but when his mum kicks the bucket, his dad can't be bothered getting a job and therefore Danny's headed for the kid's home. He escapes and joins up with some kids, but life ain't going to be getting any better for Danny any time soon.This film is bizarrely depressing due to Danny. His dad really thinks he's above any jobs and any time someone starts chewing his ears about facing reality he stares into space and goes on about conquering death (at one point referring to those gassed in the trenches in WW1 – just wait a few years film!). So his dad lies about doing nothing while Danny is chased by the cops, has his dog arrested, and let's not forget he lost his mum. Where's the light? The end, as you'd imagine, is utterly ridiculous, and seems to involve real footage of some operation integrated into the film proper (Godfrey Ho must have watched this as a kid!).

Self-absorbed scientist Dr. John Kendrick (Onslow Stevens) becomes so obsessed with realising his dream of bringing the dead back to life that he neglects both his successful medical practice and his loving family, losing his wife and his mind in the process. Rather than face a stint in juvenile hall, Kendrick's son Danny (George P. Breakston) runs away from home and joins a gang in the next neighbourhood, where his lovable mutt Scooter proves popular with the other kids until it is nabbed and gassed to death by the local dog-catcher. A distraught Danny gives his father one last chance to prove his worth: teaming up with old college pals Dr. Louise Stone (Lois Wilson) and Dr. Robert Cornish (played by real life pioneering scientist Robert Cornish), Kendrick performs a revolutionary procedure to bring the mutt back from the dead.Part heavy-handed drama, part Little Rascals-style kids' adventure, and part scientific curio, this has got to be one of the most unusual films to come out of Universal Studios during the 30s; however, despite its undeniable credentials as a genuinely bizarre obscurity, the film utilising real-life footage of Cornish's experiments on a dead dog during its climax, Life Returns offers very little in the way of real entertainment value, being too dull, depressing, and devoid of genuine entertainment value to be of much interest to anyone but the most avid fan of Universal's output.

I'm a huge fan of the classic horror & sci-fi films of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly those of Universal. So when I came across this obscure title, starring Onslow Stevens and Valerie Hobson (both of much better Universal titles), I thought I'd struck paydirt. Unfortunately, I struck just plain old ordinary dirt. For starters, this movie looks cheap. If you're expecting any of the Universal polish that you find in most of their classic films, forget it. This looks like the kind of Poverty Row cheapie Bela Lugosi would be doing in years to come. The story is basically about bringing dead dogs back to life. The main selling point is supposedly this guy Robert Cornish, who appears in the movie but hardly speaks and rarely has the camera focused on his face when he does. Apparently for about 5 minutes back in the day he made headlines for bringing a dog back to life. The actual footage of that is crammed into this movie and it's about as cheap and bland as you might expect. Although seeing the guy give the dog mouth-to-mouth is worth a gander. However, despite this movie basically only being made because of Mr. Cornish, he's not the real star of it. The star is Onslow Stevens, turning in a dreary performance as Dr. John Kendrick. He staggers around in a daze for most of the picture (when he's not acting crazy, that is). But it's not entirely his fault. The character is written so unlikeable that you can't root for him even though the movie's objective is to make you do just that. After suffering ONE setback, Dr. Kendrick turns into a total loser wandering around like he's lost and looking disheveled. The guy lets his practice go to ruin, lets his wife die and kid live on the street, all the while whining and moping. He's a mess. Speaking of the kid, he's very annoying and the actor playing him is awful ("Scoota! Scoota!"). Anyway, the best part of this whole movie to me was a minor tidbit. When they show the newspaper article announcing Kendrick's engagement, the headline below that reads "Dog Saves Lad From Wasps." That would have made for a much more interesting film, I think. I was pretty disappointed in this movie and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but Universal completists and people who like movies they can make fun of.

Universal created this picture with a horror theme that was too upsetting for the British and it was censored. "Life Returns" was fiction and created by director Eugene Frenke and his writers James Hogan, John Goodrich, Arthur Homan, Wolfe Gilbert and Mary McCarthy. Onslow Stevens, formerly the invisible scientist of Universal's science-fiction serial "The Vanishing Shadow",'34, played John Kendrick, a doctor devoted to seeking a formula to restore life after death. He succeeds when his son's pet, called Lazarus is gassed by the dog-catcher. It was surprising to see Valerie Hobson playing the faithful doctor's wife. Great Film for 1935!