Directed and written by John Harrison (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) from a story by Ron Goulart, “Printer’s Devil” proves that if you own a small business in Tales from the Darkside, a supernatural entity is definitely going to show up to offer you a deal that ends with you screaming into the void.
Junior P. Harmon (Larry Manetti, taking a break from Magnum P.I.) is a hack writer whose career is deader than a Sunday matinee in a blizzard. He’s staring down the barrel of total failure until he meets Alex Kellaway (Charles Knapp), a creepy old man who looks like he smells of mothballs and brimstone. Kellaway offers him the ultimate ghostwriting deal: Junior gets the fame, the money, and the top of the bestseller list, provided he follows a very specific, very bloody set of instructions.
The catch? Kellaway’s muse doesn’t run on coffee; it runs on organic sacrifices. Junior starts small, knocking off pets to keep the hits coming, and soon he’s the toast of the town, moving in with his high-powered editor, Brenda Hardcastle (Nita Talbot). But the “Printer’s Devil” is a greedy editor, and soon the blood tax goes up. Before Junior can say Pulitzer, he realizes that when you sign a contract with a supernatural entity in a Darkside episode, the fine print is usually written in your own hemoglobin.
The episode even features a deep-cut Easter egg for the die-hards: the song playing on the radio is by Justine Bancroft, the character Lisa Bonet played in “The Satanic Piano.”
