William Conrad made the same amount of films in one year as Terrence Malick did in twenty-five. As mentioned in our review of "Two On A Guillotine", the entirety of Conrad's cinematic directorial career was contained within the year of 1965. Today, we look at his second picture, the love through the ages psychological suspense story, "My Blood Runs Cold"
We open with a Byron quote read by an uncredited narrator (does anybody know if it's Conrad doing the voice-over?) A woman stands before her home above the sea, a gauzy optical effect overlaying the entire pre-credit sequence. A male voice calls out the name "Barbara" in a ghostly bellow. Roll credits.
Afterwards, we join Julie (Joey Heatherton) and Harry (Nicolas Coster) on a California highway en route to a marina that is being dedicated to her father, Julian Merriday (Barry Sullivan). Julie speeds erratically and almost hits motorcyclist Ben Gunther (Troy Donahue). Ben ends up on the side of the road, and Julie's car careens into the Pacific ocean. The shot of her T-Bird in the surf is a memorable one and embodies the mid 20th century as well as any image I've seen.
Relatively unharmed by the accident, Ben repeatedly refers to Julie as "Barbara". In a bit of odd, ham handed plotting, Julie and Harry bring Ben along to the marina after taking him to the hospital. Ben doesn't seem to mind, though, quite the contrary. After dinner at the Merriday's, he makes his affection for Julie known to Harry; "I've known her a long time...a lot longer than you have."
Julie inquires of her aunt Sarah (Jeanette Nolan) if there was ever a member of the family named Barbara, and she informs her it was the name of her great grandmother. Later, Ben arrives at "Spindrift", the family estate Julie has been restoring and stares at her like a creep for a while before making his presence known. He gives her a locket with her image in it, telling her it was given to him a hundred year's ago by Barbara Merriday. At this point the script demonstrates it's total lack of confidence in the audience's intellect and spells everything out with this bit of dialogue: "...you're trying to tell me I'm the reincarnation of the woman in this locket...you're the reincarnation of someone Barbara Merriday knew..." The locket turns out to be genuine after it is authenticated by none other than Floyd the Barber himself (the appearance of Howard McNear is hands down the most exciting moment of the film).
Heatherton's heavy lidded screen presence is all ice blond upper class entitled ennui. Her and Donahue have the energy together of a Quaalude party; their's is a lethargic love. She doesn't act in the picture so much as wander through it in a Valium haze.
Conrad does manage to conjure some fine imagery out of a scene where Julie and Ben visit the undersea cave where their past selves supposedly made love. The visuals of them-especially Heatherton- bathed in sea mist and reflected light have a shimmering luminous beauty.
The caretaker of "Spindrift" is found murdered and Ben becomes the chief suspect of the police investigation. He and Julie elope together, heading out to sea in bad weather. I was hoping a violent thunderstorm at sea would defibrillate a pulse into this picture's cinematic heart, but it remains a flatliner. Instead, we get a brief moment of the boat enduring the storm and a really long scene of Julien and Sarah discussing Julie's affair's and working through their familial angst. This is indicative of how the picture consistently fails to exploit it's dramatic elements, providing nothing to engage the audience for any length of time.
A late third act revelation regarding Ben's dubious sanity adds some urgency to the proceedings. Conrad does some good work down the stretch; there's a visually remarkable sequence of Ben and Julie journeying through a dreamy coastal fog, and a climatic action sequence at a factory that almost commits to a heartbreakingly memorable ending (akin to Conrad's two other film's) before pulling back at the last second. But, there's nothing so notable as to make the arduous journey through the rest of the picture worth it.
"My Blood Runs Cold" is a languorously paced would be thriller whose character's are as unengaged with the narrative as the audience. It could easily stand to lose fifteen minutes from it's running time. George Duning's score is extremely enjoyable, but it's easy listening nature only adds to the overall flat affect. Lastly, Donahue's performance towards the end isn't terrible at all, but when it comes to 50's and 60's pretty boy's with a dark psyche, I'll take Robert Wagner in "A Kiss Before Dying" any day.
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