User Reviews

A Season One episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' offered this same story under the title 'Shopping for Death'. It would be a toss-up between the two programs as to which Mrs. Shrike were the nastier person, Jo Van Fleet in the Hitchcock version, or Eileen Brennan in this one. Similarly, the pair of retired insurance salesmen in either one struck me as a couple of busybodies with nothing better to do than check their actuarial tables to determine who was a good candidate for murder. One difference though, the earlier story set the temperature for maximum murder at ninety two degrees. Since this was Ray Bradbury Theater, and he was the writer, you can probably go with the hundred and two degree number they used here to better coincide with the original story. Well, the insurance guys (Barry Morse, Joseph Shaw) have little luck here trying to warn the crotchety old lady that she needs to change her ways. In fact, one of them gets so frustrated he almost puts Mrs. Shrike out of her misery with his own cane! Had they been around for the lady's phone call to her husband, they might have guessed that she was only a few minutes shy of their ominous prediction. Death by meat hook has to be a hard way to go.