Welcome to 31 Days of Fright: Mach 7!

The warm weather around these parts might convince you otherwise but a quick look at the calendar next to my desk confirms that, yep, it's October.

And you know what that means... the shackles come off and for 31 glorious days it's not just ok to be a horror fan it's downright encouraged!

Pumpkin-flavored goodies fill store shelves (though pumpkin beer is getting dangerously close to being a July 4th offering), every sitcom, cooking show and renovation-centered "reality" program trots out a Halloween theme and some spooky music, and the fine folks at TCM and AMC start airing the flicks in primetime that they usually relegate to the 2 AM on Saturday morning graveyard slot. (You can also check out the ABC Family lineup here or view The Atlantic's exhaustive list of every horror flick airing this month.)

But, so what? As much as my viewing tastes may have wandered from the horror trenches over recent years it's still fun to embrace all that's great, not so great, fun, silly, scary (sometimes), entertaining and lovably dumb about this time of year.

So, as we've done every October for the last seven (!) years it's time for our annual '31 Days of Fright' blog feature, complete with reviews, links, clips, trailers and whatever else we can dig up to make the month fun.

We also have a new issue of ER to promote so be sure to head over to the Exploitation Retrospect Facebook page, "Like" us and watch for giveaways featuring our latest issues as well as DVDs and more.

And, much like Christmas traditions, we here at ER have our own '31 Days of Fright' tradition that kicks off the series each year...