***SPOILERS*** Somewhat strange and ridicules story of love and reincarnation that spans something like 100 years with 29 year old former teenage heartthrob Troy Donahue as the mysterious and at the same times freaked out and delusional Ben Gunther. It's Ben who literally runs into-with his motorcycle- pretty and filthy rich Julie Merriday, Joey Heatherton, while zooming along the Pacific Highway at 120 mph. As if it were fate or a sign from heaven Ben realized that Julie and him were lover back in the 1870's who ended up killing themselves-Like Romeo & Juliet- when their parents disapproved of them getting married to each other.At first Julie thinks that Ben is suffering from brain damage due to his accident but in time he proves to her that his crazy statements about him knowing her in a past life are legit. That by providing evidence like photos and trinkets of his romance with Julie 100 years ago when she was actually her own great-great-great grandmother! It's Julie's dad Julian, Barry Sullivan, who sees Ben as a both fraud and gold digger who tries to get Julie to stop seeing him only to have her end up eloping, in Ben's boat,to Mexico with him to get married."""SPOILERS***The truth about Ben's true identity slowly comes to the surface together with two of his victims who he strangled to death and dumped into the Pacific Ocean. With the fact coming out about Ben being an escaped inmate from a hospital for the criminally insane he tries to kidnap Julie only to have the local police as well as Julie's former lover and fiancée Harry Lindsey, Nicolas Coaster, try to rescue her before he does her any harm. In the end it's Ben who does himself in-in knowing that the jig is up- by jumping some 200 feet to his death in order to avoid ending up locked up for life in a mental institution or being strapped into the San Queinton gas chamber for multiple murder.P.S This film -"My Blood Runs Cold"- turned out to be the last major movie that Troy Donahue was to star in before his film career hit rock bottom co-staring in such low budget and forgettable films like "The Cock Fighter" and "The Chilling" before dropping out of sight altogether. Troy in the end ended up broke and homeless sleeping on a park bench in New York City's Central Park and dying of a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 65.

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 must have been sick and tired of his parts of nice good-looking boys ;his attempt at a troubled character is certainly laudable,for who could believe he is able to do so very bad things?The problem is the prologue which promised more than we are given :the picture imitates a tapestry,giving the feeling of something of long ago ;and there are four lines of a poem by a poem by Byron ,which finally doesn't bring anything to a plot which steals from " portrait of Jennie" "Vertigo" and "Pandora" -hasn't Donahue got a ship?- to name but three ,but there is more.There's even a "love story" side for the girl's dad is a rich man whereas the blond boy has ,it seems ,no penny to his name .After three or four melodramas (the best of which is arguably "Parrish" ),it was a good idea to cast this good -looking actor in a disturbing role:at the beginning of the movie,and at least in the first half ,the audience does believe he is a romantic man who lives in the past and comes back (from the dead?) to claim his one and only love.But things go wrong in the second part in which the director seems not able to build an eerie magic atmosphere ;the final chase is the easy way out and the final pictures do not even try to disturb the viewer a little bit.

Troy Donahue was on suspension for a while refusing WB films etc and returned to the studio to film this William Conrad thriller. Troy Donahue excelled in the lush romantic dramas filmed by Delmer Daves at Warners however Troy Donahue lost his footing in this film. My Blood Runs Cold should have been filmed in Color and lost some of its edge by filmed in black and white. William Conrad who would have a TV career in Jake and The Fatman was also a Director and did Connie Stevens' Two On A Guillotine, Jeff Hunter's Brainstorm among other films. Not a great Film Director but Mr Conrad's films are enjoyable. Carol Lynley was first slotted for this film but was optioned by Otto Preminger under a contract Carol Lynley had with Preminger to do a Preminger film. Joey Heatherton took the role.Joey Heatherton made Where Love Has Gone with Susan Hayward, and Bette Davis at Paramount, Twilight of Honor at MGM with Richard Chamberlain and this WB movie. Not sure why Joey Heatherton made no other noteworthy films.This was Troy Donahue's last movie at Warner Bros and his last as a Star