Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940) *** (out of 4)This film from the Techfilm Studio in Moscow, Russia is quite a bizarre one and one that's hard to really judge or rate. Basically what we see is Russian scientists trying to restore life back to a bunch of dead dogs. Early in the film we see their hearts and lungs kept alive but then we move to bigger attempts, which includes keeping the head of a dog alive while it's detached from the rest of its body. Finally, the scientists remove all the blood from a full dog, keep it dead for ten-minutes and then try to pump the blood back to try and restore its life. I'm not sure how many people actually watched this thing when it was released but once the Prelinger Archives released it it seemed the flood gates opened in terms of controversy. If you do some reading on the picture there are all sorts of arguments going on about whether what we're seeing is real or fake. I've seen "experts" say that it's all fake. I've seen "experts" say that it's all real. I've heard people say why on Earth would anyone want to watch something like this, which is a good point because there's no doubt that real animals are being used so the images are certainly going to be very disturbing to most. For the most part I thought the film was very crudely made but this actually helped build up some strange and rather unique atmosphere. This is like a low-budget movie that just goes for shock value even though the filmmakers were obviously trying to show this as a documentary. The images of the heart's beating and the dog coming back to life was just way too weird and is certainly some of the most bizarre images you're going to see from this era. With all of that said, you can't deny that the film contains a certain amount of power simply because of how strange it is. This isn't really a film you can recommend to people but if you're interested then you're almost guaranteed to see something unlike you've seen before.