Along with a throwaway horror flick in an extremely busy three-picture year of 1965, the best-known-for-television actor William Conrad directed an unintentional neo-noir double-feature, BRAINSTORM and MY BLOOD RUNS COLD, both highly memorable, unique, creative and eclectic: the latter providing limited-rage Troy Donahue a surprisingly intense performance... with layers...
Albeit most of them intentionally hidden since his character is deeply enigmatic from the start, and desperately vulnerable -- literally when he's almost killed by spoiled, fitfully gorgeous rich girl Joey Heatherton...
Caustic and careless, stubborn and carefree, Heatherton's Julie Merriday drives her convertible towards the rural seaside Monterey-based locale so dangerously, pseudo-boyfriend Nicolas Coster fears for his life before she almost genuinely ends ten-speed-riding Donahue's - here as stranger-in-town Ben Gunther: despite the bizarre assertion to have been around forever...
Or at least a hundred years, claiming he's been reincarnated as Julie's distant ancestor and spending most of the film strategically romancing the full-lipped blonde bombshell by convincing her she's his former doomed love, who was her own great-grandmother: providing Donahue an offbeat and eccentric, borderline psychopathic role channeled through an otherwise straight/subdued persona...
And where a more animated actor might've seemed part of a charming con-man ruse, Donahue's wooden/stilted underacting works for both story and character... his only challenge is Heatherton's "I own this town" tycoon father Barry Sullivan, fretting for his adored only-child while sporadically curbed by his artistic, open-minded sister (and Julie's mentoring aunt) Jeanette Nolan...
And as the most intriguing sequences occur early on... when the mysterious, noir-inspired investigating-the-past slowly unveils... Heatherton can take her time, balancing sheer disbelief with lovestruck confusion without rushing into the inevitable wispy Harlequin melodrama, thankfully enveloped by a slowburn boat chase before a quick foot-chase finale, ultimately making MY BLOOD RUNS COLD an entirely different kind of romantic thriller, and beyond.
Albeit most of them intentionally hidden since his character is deeply enigmatic from the start, and desperately vulnerable -- literally when he's almost killed by spoiled, fitfully gorgeous rich girl Joey Heatherton...
Caustic and careless, stubborn and carefree, Heatherton's Julie Merriday drives her convertible towards the rural seaside Monterey-based locale so dangerously, pseudo-boyfriend Nicolas Coster fears for his life before she almost genuinely ends ten-speed-riding Donahue's - here as stranger-in-town Ben Gunther: despite the bizarre assertion to have been around forever...
Or at least a hundred years, claiming he's been reincarnated as Julie's distant ancestor and spending most of the film strategically romancing the full-lipped blonde bombshell by convincing her she's his former doomed love, who was her own great-grandmother: providing Donahue an offbeat and eccentric, borderline psychopathic role channeled through an otherwise straight/subdued persona...
And where a more animated actor might've seemed part of a charming con-man ruse, Donahue's wooden/stilted underacting works for both story and character... his only challenge is Heatherton's "I own this town" tycoon father Barry Sullivan, fretting for his adored only-child while sporadically curbed by his artistic, open-minded sister (and Julie's mentoring aunt) Jeanette Nolan...
And as the most intriguing sequences occur early on... when the mysterious, noir-inspired investigating-the-past slowly unveils... Heatherton can take her time, balancing sheer disbelief with lovestruck confusion without rushing into the inevitable wispy Harlequin melodrama, thankfully enveloped by a slowburn boat chase before a quick foot-chase finale, ultimately making MY BLOOD RUNS COLD an entirely different kind of romantic thriller, and beyond.