My Blood Runs Cold

Young 21-year-old Julie (Joey Heatherton) is dating old but dependable Harry (Nicholas Coaster). Then she meets young hunky Ben (Troy Donahue) who seems instantly smitten with her. It seems he thinks she's the reincarnation of a woman he loved in another life! He knows a lot about her family that there's no way he could have known. Is it true?

Obscure little thriller. The basic plot is interesting and it moves quickly enough. Donahue and Heatherton are certainly an attractive couple and shown in their bathing suits often. But this movie has problems. It's flatly directed and Barry Sullivan and Coaster are dreadful in their roles. Donahue and Heatherton are bad too but Donahue tries and is actually very good at times. Old pro Jeanette Nolan however is superb as Aunt Sarah. The ultimate resolution was disappointing but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't entertained. I give it a 6.

I put chiller in quotes, because this is just not thrilling or chilling in any way, It needs to be edited down (almost 2 hours for a thin plot), and the writing and the direction needed to be scaled back -- too much scenery chewing and yelling.

But there are some fun compensations.

The director, William Conrad, was better known as a radio actor, and the small parts of this movie are filled with veteran radio performers: Jeanette Nolan, Howard McNear, Ben Wright, Barry Sullivan, and even Conrad's voice turns up as the helicopter operator towards the end. If you listen to old radio shows, this is a bit of a treat.

The fashions are....well, Jeanette Nolan must be seen to be believed. Her hair is tortured into some demented structure in every scene. One dinner scene has her sporting a tower of hair that Marie Antoinette would have envied. Then there is the part where she has her hair in braids like a coronet, this is the scene where she stays up all night long to make sure that her niece is okay. Bright and early, the next morning, her hair is piled up like a castle battlement with curls and ruffles with an incongruous pony tail sticking straight out the back. When does the woman find the time to do her hair? Does she have a fully staffed beauty salon in her bedroom, or does the long suffering butler (the only servant we ever see) do the hot curler thing in addition to everything else? Her costumes are also flowing caftan like things made of satin. Who really dressed like this? Sorry to go on so much about the clothes and hair, but it was absolutely fascinating, in a bizarre way.

One of our local TV channels used to show this movie frequently on the late show--but not at all in the last 10 years, so it appears "My Blood Runs Cold" is another in the long line of forgotten '60s potboilers. Too bad, because it's dopey fun. Joey Heatherton proves she's quite the little thespian here, portraying swinging single meeting a strange young man who is convinced he was her lover in a past life! Story is fairly tight, until the last reel when it begins to unravel. The chase-climax is straight off the assembly line. However, Joey is really charismatic here and had me glued to the screen. She overcomes the obvious exploitation angle director William Conrad takes and gives the picture a big boost. **1/2 from ****

If you go in with your expectations adjusted to the fact that the stars of this are Troy Donahue and Joey Heatherton, hardly renown for their thespic abilities, then you should enjoy this rather overwrought drama that wants to be a thriller but isn't very chilling at all.

Troy shows up out of the blue when heiress Joey almost runs him down and is transfixed from the beginning telling her she's the reincarnation of his long lost love, Joey's great, great grandmother. This gives her understandable pause until he shows her a locket of the woman that Joey is a dead ringer for, apparently they had bottle blonds in the 17th century! It doesn't get any more believable from that point on but if you like 60's potboilers this has its charms.

Jeanette Nolan as Joey's aunt who knows most if not all the secrets gives the best performance and her hairpieces have to be seen to be believed! One is so mountainous that it's bigger than her head!

A great deal of fun in an over the top ridiculous kind of way.

Troy Donahue plays a most unusual role. In "My Blood Runs Cold", he plays Ben...a man obsessed with Julie (Joey Heatherton) and insists they knew each other in a previous life. The closest thing to proof is a locket with a portrait of Julie's great-great grandmother who apparently was the spitting image of her. But he insists they are destined to be together forever...which really creeps out Julie's father as well as her boyfriend. Inexplicably, Julie falls for Ben...and you can't help but think she's in for trouble as Ben is most likely psychologically imbalanced. Again....this is most unusual for Donahue as he usually played heartthrob roles that were a bit bland. Here, he's anything but bland!

So is it any good? Yes...but not great. One big problem I have about the story is that Julie comes from a rich family who is worried about Ben. Yet, they never have a private investigator look into who he is...had they even done a quick examination of his past, they would quickly learned the truth. A minor problem is that Julie is a really annoying character--impulsive and selfish. Heatherton's acting, especially at the end, was 'different'. So, worrying about her character's plight isn't very likely. Making her character more naive, less whiny and more likable would have helped the film. And, the ending was...well...a bit weak (that's putting it nicely!). Apart from these things, it's not bad and Donahue is a bit better than you'd expect. Worth watching mostly because it's different.