Welcome to 31 DAYS OF FRIGHT Version 6.0!

Welcome to October aka the best time of year to be a fright fan. Every channel from The Food Network to AMC trots out their spookiest programming and nobody looks at you funny if you spend the next 31 days extolling the virtues of THE PROPECHY, Fred Olen Ray's SIDESHOW and every Z-grade slasher clogging up your Netflix queue.

"Hey man! I'm just getting in the Halloween spirit!"

And so begins our annual 31 DAYS OF FRIGHT blog feature, which acts as many things here at ER HQ. It's part writing exercise and part review clearinghouse but it has also become a bit of an unofficial countdown to my absolutely favorite two days of the year – The Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horror Marathon which takes place on October 26-27. (31 DAYS blog entries from the past five years [!] can be viewed here.)

Cinema Arcana editor/good pal Bruce Holecheck and I have been in attendance every year, even the first 'thon when the seats were at their least comfy and somebody had the bright idea to show Al Adamson's wretched DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN around 5:15 AM. (You can read the grisly details of that first Exhumed marathon here.)

Subsequent years have all sort of blurred together – it doesn't help that the fine gents at Exhumed have added a 12-hour mini-fest each spring to further confuse me – and I can't even find my list from last year, but the event has provided the opportunity to see everything from WICKED, WICKED and RAW FORCE to FRIGHTMARE, LADY TERMINATOR, DEMONS, HOUSE ON STRAW HILL, BLADE OF THE RIPPER, DEAD & BURIED, HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH and even the great RE-ANIMATOR on the big screen in all their 35mm glory.

Every year I try and predict what they'll show and every year I come up with a wish list of what I hope they'll show... and every year I'm really, really wrong. But that's okay. It's become an all-too-rare opportunity to meet up with pals, chat about trash, drink too much caffeine, stay up all night and wallow in all the things I love about this time of year.

And speaking of things I love about this time of year, it's time to kick things off with our annual viewing of my favorite Halloween song... "Happy Halloween from Michael McDonald". Sing it with me folks... You don't know me but I'm a vampire/And my friend here is a Frankenstein...

Enjoy the song and enjoy the posts... chime in along the way in our comments section and watch for the first review post – albeit a melancholy one – to appear later this morning.

Happy Halloween!