John Kendrick (Onslow Stevens), Louise Stone (Lois Wilson) and Robert Cornish (playing himself) are three happy college students out to change the world with their theory of bringing the dead back to life. At graduation, Kendrick excitedly tells his colleagues how heâs gotten them all jobs at a pharmaceutical company. The others object because a commercial firm can never share their lofty goals, but Kendrick is certain that their resources will complete the project faster, and abandons them. Kendrick becomes even more obsessed, and he also marries a socialite (Valerie Hobson) and has a child, though those arenât important matters as we learn about the first only through a newspaper headline. As it turns out, Stone and Cornish were correctâas if that wasnât really clear from the startâand the company wants him to break off his vital research to work on âhair growth brushes.â This disappointment is too much for him and he has a mental breakdown. He runs around announcing that he wants to bring the dead to life, which for some reason doesnât go over well. Then his wife dies ofâŚI donât knowâŚperhaps being poor⌠It isnât explained. Perhaps she died of Valerie Hobson walking off this project in disgust; that makes sense anyway. His child is taken away by the state since Kendrick shows no signs of being able to take care of anything (how does he still have a house?), but the kid runs away and meets up with a bunch of escapees from an Our Gang comedy that all live in a club house. The kidâs much beloved dog is captured by the dog catcher and put to death. So now itâs up to Dr. Kendrick, with help from Dr. Robert Cornishâwho is the greatest human being to ever walk the Earth; all praise to Robert Cornishâto bring the dog back to life in order to regain his sonâs love.
As Life Returns was distributed by Universal, starred Onslow Stevens who was in House of Dracula, co-starred Valerie Hobson who was in both The Werewolf of London and Bride of Frankenstein, and is about a âmad scientistâ bringing the dead to life, it has gotten grouped in with Universal Horror. It doesnât belong. It also was banned in Britain, so itâs gained a mystique. It doesnât deserve that eitherâthe mystique that is; the banning is another matter.
This isnât Universal horror. This is trash cinema of the lowest sort, trying and failing to exploit a recent headline. Produced by Scienart Pictures (its only film), not Universal, the news it was exploiting involved Robert Cornish, although perhaps âexploitâ is the wrong word as it is more of a propaganda piece, or advertisement for Cornish.
In the early â30s Dr. Robert Cornish had theories on âbringing the dead back to lifeâ which today weâd call reviving or using CPR. He wanted to work on humans, but this was frowned upon, so he got five dogs, suffocated them, and then immediately tried to revive them with adrenaline and rocking them on a âteeterboard.â It didnât work well, but had some effect. Three died; the other two were brain damaged and blind, after which Cornish hid them away and claimed it was a success. He was fired from the UCLA because they werenât idiots. So he decided to work from home on pigs, because nothing says sane and reasonable like killing pigs in your extra bedroom in order to bring them back to life. Of course killing animals in your home can get pricey and he wanted funding, so he tried to get some positive publicity with Life Returns. I donât know if he approached the producers or they approached him. The idea was to build an emotional, fictional story around a recording of one of his dog experiments. So footage of the actual experiment is in the film (and as Britain isnât keen on animal abuse in cinema, it was banned) and the movie starts with two different statements on how Cornishâs work is miraculous and important. No mention was made of him being a weirdo working at home.
Life Returns didnât gain Cornish the popular acclaimed he desired, possibly because itâs a tedious film. He did pop back up in the news some years later when he wanted to bring a convicted child-murderer back to life after his execution. Needless to say, the authorities werenât keen on this idea. That he couldnât have done it didnât stop him getting as much press as possible out of it.
Itâs hard to express how horrible this movie is. At first I couldnât imagine how they got Valerie Hobson to appear in this kind of trash, but I hadnât realized she was only 17 at the time (or perhaps 16 during filming) and is only in it for a few minutes. Onslow Stevens didnât have a shining career, but he rated better than this, so I assuming they just lied to him. Cornish gets top billing.
I canât find a budget for Life Returns, but by the look of it, I figure it was in the hundreds. The setups are primitive with the camera generally sitting in one place and the result is ugly (though to be fair, no one has put any care into preserving this abomination). Stock footage is used which doesnât match the shot footage (and Iâm not only referring to the experiment, which does indeed match extremely poorly; in an early montage we see a college graduation which clearly is from a different source from the set-bound scene that follows). The movie starts (after a fade-out of Cornishâs face), for no reason I can determine, with stock footage of wheat and ploughing. Iâm guessing they could get it for free.
Thereâs something gruesome about the dog resurrection scene, knowing that weâre not watching some kidâs pup that had been dead for hours brought back, but a dog that Conrish had just killed and then only partially restored. The âprocedureâ is intercut with shots of Onslow Stevens overacting, a group of medical scientists watching, and the child oozing about how swell his dad is. All of which makes it worse.
The dialog is exactly what youâd expect from a quickly written propaganda flick. Important moments flash by with a few words, and then we get long speeches, all culminating in the final:
âDr. Cornish is the man of the hour; Dr. Stone and I are merely contributors to his fulfillment. â
(Kid: âDad, Youâre the swellest dad in the worldâ)
âGentleman, what youâve seen demonstrated is only a forerunner in the march of science. Itâs promise to humanity has been answered today. The next step is in the hands of tomorrow.â
Life Returns isnât horror, except for itâs connection to dog murder. Itâs sometimes called science fiction and I suppose that fits since Cornish couldnât do what is implied in the film. The best label for Life Returns is garbage.