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Another Halloween is come and gone, and so ends another barrage of obligatory Halloween holiday horror fare. The Big Three, Jason, Freddy and Michael return to their respective places on the shelves at your local, friendly, neighborhood video rental facility to gather dust until next year’s Halloween. We know their stories by heart and could probably easily recite, scene by scene their tales; one is on a morality binge, determined to execute any and all teenagers in his path guilty of smoking pot or engaging in premarital sex.  Another is “the bastard son of a thousand maniacs.” The third wears an innocuous mask and thrives on a 20-year-long murder streak, trying to kill off his family. Bing, bang, boom.

There is a second horror-trio that is a little less celebrated, but just as heinous: they are Pumpkinhead, Pinhead and the Tall Man.

“Pumpkinhead,” right off the bat, screams Halloween horror magic. The premise is so simple, the story is plenty horrifying and it stars Lance Henriksen, who is God. Rent the first season of “Millennium” and you’ll see what I mean: the man is dark, he’s craggy and his delivery is just phenomenal. The story itself is about an Appalachian backwoods legend: a demon, buried in a hidden graveyard that can be summoned at any time by a witch to wreak vengeance most foul. The monster itself was incredible; second only to the xenomorphic alien in “Alien” in its design and execution. The atmosphere itself was a work of art, filmed mostly in the woods near an abandoned church with bright lights cast through the evening fog seriously brought up the scare-factor.

Pinhead and the “Hellraiser” series come up a close second with its inventive use of decorations and accessories. Consider Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites, if you will. They are generally humanoid in appearance, dressed in black leather garments; their bodies, meanwhile, are subject to numerous modifications and mutilations. Most notably is Pinhead’s head: at some point (we actually see the process in “Hellbound: Hellraiser II”) a grid was carved into his face and head, and long nails were driven through at the intersections, deep into the brain. Other injuries and modifications to himself and the other Cenobites include various lacerations to the head, neck or torso, facial mutilation, and wires, nails, hooks or plugs spun through the flesh itself. Then there is the puzzle box, Pinhead’s only means of entering our world (thank ye Heavens). Once opened, usually by someone seeking pleasure beyond our normal means of perception, vicious, possibly sentient hook-tipped chains burst out of nowhere, dragging them to their doom, or, on occasion, simply ripping them asunder.

Finally, we come to the Tall Man of “Phantasm.” Few figures in horror can truly exude the mysterious evil he seems to create; he wears the Dark Side almost as easily as he wears his black suit. Throughout the “Phantasm” series (what remains in print, at any rate) we see the Tall Man, a mysterious being from another world, universe, dimension, whatever, passing from small, bucolic American town to small, bucolic American town, killing off its citizens and turning them into slaves. Aside for being fundamentally evil and driving around in a wicked-ass hearse, he also has his retinue of accessories, known as the Sentinel Spheres by fans of the series. The spheres are around four inches in diameter, made of a silver metal; they fly around via telekinesis (this is assumed- no one knows for sure) and attack with a pair of razor-sharp blades and a cranial drill. Later models featured a small circular saw or a cutting laser. And he had a lot of these things, not just one or two.

Everyone knows Freddy, Jason and Michael; we’ve seen them all die five or six or seven times. Collectively, they’ve got the lifespan of at least three cats. But what about the little three, what about those creepy creatures of darkness and night that we may know and love, but aren’t granted the almost annual cycle of repeat and sequel? As Halloween drifts away and rolls on toward Thanksgiving this year, consider the little guy. And for God’s sake, don’t open the puzzle box!

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