TV Episode
What You Need
- by Rod Serling, directed by Alvin Ganzer
- (CBS-TV, USA, 25 December 1959)
Rod Serling does an admirable job translating the original story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore to the small screen. The story’s two main incidents (the scissors and the shoes) come through with little change. In this version, the curious shopkeeper has become a street vendor, and the man who’s interested in the vendor’s goods is now a darker lowlife than the original newspaperman. Also, the science fiction aspect has been replaced by psychic precognition, solidly in the realm of fantasy, but not quite into weird fiction. —Michael Main
What have you got in there? Some sort of machine? Crystal ball? . . . You can see ahead, can’t you? You can look into the future.