This Ray Bradbury penned story probably fits more into a "Twilight Zone" episode format than the usual Hitchcock entry. That said, old Alfred straddled that thin line quite a few times over the years and this is certainly one of them. Two retired insurance salesmen (John Qualen and Robert Harris) have found a new sideline; they walk through the city streets together to pick out the next "accident waiting to happen." They find one in a wreck of a 45-year-old woman named Mrs. Shrike (a nearly unrecognizable Jo Van Fleet). She lives in a miserable slum tenement with a drunken husband prone to violence. His abuse and nastiness to her is matched equally by her own and she serves everyone else she encounters with more of the same. To put it in literary terms, she's a modern-day Madame DeFarge without the revolutionary fervor. Making matters worse, the temperature in the city is boiling over and everyone's nerves are frayed. Harris and Qualen visit Ms. Van Fleet to try to warn her of her dire situation and to give her some much-needed comfort. Her response to their kindness is to literally rip into them with the same diatribe as she did with all her other acquaintances of the day and their efforts are mostly futile. Meanwhile, her disgusting husband is already plastered with alcohol and is heading home with a longshoreman's hook stuffed in his back pocket. It's obvious that he's not going to use it to hang up his shirt. "Shopping for Death" is a tour-de-force for the acting talents of Jo Van Fleet and she gives a performance for the ages. The Academy Award winning Ms. Van Fleet could play everything from a glamour girl to a working class hag. There's no glamour in this role, but there's plenty of "hag." Look for Michael Ansara in a small part as the neighborhood butcher. He gets an earful from Jo but keeps his cool--even though the thermometer is exploding. He's still around today.
Review of Shopping for Death
