'MY BLOOD RUNS COLD'.....TROY MEETS GIRL....OR: DEJA VU TO A KILL

My Blood Runs Cold (1965)   William Conrad enjoyed a long, prolific career as a journeyman character actor, TV star and voice-over narrator.........

                  What caught our eye most, though, was his brief but busy mid-1960's reign as a director of black-and-white, cheapie thrillers for Warner Brothers......

                    In quick succession, Conrad pumped out 3 of these Panavision-Monochrome semi-noirs, "Two On a Guillotine", "Brainstorm".......and this one, a kind of lame-brained, junior varsity 'Vertigo'.....

                    "My Blood Runs Cold" could've ascended to the level of Guilty Pleasure if Conrad employed real actors for his lead roles........a spoiled heiress and a mystery man who seduces her into thinking they were lovers in a previous life......

                     Who he got was that dead-eyed, dead-voiced, slab 'o blonde beef Troy Donahue, finishing out his Warner Brothers servitude as designated teen heartthrob........and for the girl....Joey Heatherton, one of the 60's well remembered sex kittens, whose primary tasks were......sex-kittenhood.

                      So you see the problem here.......neither of these kiddies had the chops to make you believe even one minute of this ridiculous, far-fetched melodrama.  Director Conrad, smart enough to know his target demographic were teens steaming up the car windows at the drive-in theatres, put the ever pouting, hip-twitching Heatherton in babydoll nighties and bathing suits as often as possible.

                      There was little he could do with the blank-faced Donahue, who meager acting skills couldn't possibly put across the mixture of soulful romantic and obsessive psychotic that the role required.

                       To make matters worse the script forced Donahue to enact operatic seizures.......and the film's connect-the-dots finale unfolds like a dreary, unsurprising TV crime show episode.......

                      A few pleasures pop up throughout........veteran character actors Barry Sullivan and Jeanette Nolen, as Heatherton's father and aunt, tear through their scenes with top-of-their-lungs abandon.  And Nicolas Coster turns the thankless role of Heatherton's wishy-washy would-be fiance into an ambivalent, sardonic, and near heroic guy.

                        Conrad. a seasoned pro, does keep the whole thing rollin' along at a decent clip to qualify the movie as at least watchable......but barely.  His two leads are hopeless and the story they're telling keeps no twists or sudden surprises up its sleeve......

                       For BQ, the film struggles to achieve 2 stars (**)........halfway through it, we amused ourselves daydreaming how a young Dennis Hopper or Jack Nicholson might have brought enough crazy to turn this turgid time-waster into  a loony chunk 'o fun..........sigh......