My Blood Runs Cold * (1965, Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Barry Sullivan, Nicolas Coster, Jeanette Nolan) – Classic Movie Review 11,294

Director William Conrad’s 1965 Warner Bros black and white chiller My Blood Runs Cold is written by John Mantley, based on Meredyth Lucas’s yarn The Girl Who Was Two, and stars Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Barry Sullivan, Nicolas Coster and Jeanette Nolan.

Audiences’ blood ran cold at this horrible, poorly played psychopath horror melodrama, with neurotic biker Ben Gunther (Troy Donahue) suffering from the delusion that he and rich reckless Californian swinger Julie Merriday (Joey Heatherton) were lovers in a past life when she and her lawyer boyfriend Harry Lindsay (Nicolas Coster) help Donahue after knocking him off his motorbike. Ben has to abandon his damaged bike and take a ride from Julie, but weirdly insists on calling her ‘Barbara’.

The totally artificial and ridiculous screenplay would defeat much better actors than these, and there is little in the way of compensating tension or eerie atmosphere in the direction.

Also in the cast are Russell Thorson, Ben Wright, Shirley Mitchell, Howard McNear, Howard Wendell, John Holland and John McCook.

Director / producer Conrad produced and directed several films for Warner Bros, including the thriller Brainstorm (1965) with Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis. He later became a TV star and played TV detective Cannon (1971), the TV detective Nero Wolfe (1981) and District Attorney McCabe on TV’s Jake and the Fatman (1987).

One of two 45-lb 11½” tall lead falcon props made for use in The Maltese Falcon (1941), which was marred at the end of the movie by Sydney Greenstreet, was gifted to Conrad by studio chief Jack L Warner. It was auctioned in December 1994, nine months after Conrad’s death, for $398,500 – the highest price then paid for a movie prop – and is now valued at over $8 million.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,294

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