- MADD FRANK
- (Credited as "Kent Kamron"; real name: Delray K. Dvoracek)
- Visit WWW.DKDBOOKS.COM, Delray K. Dvoracek's website for his professional writing
(under both his real name and his pen name "Kent Kamron").
- Madd Frank Presents
- Friday night about 10 pm, then 11 pm, then Saturday night, various times along the way.
- KVRR-TV, Channel 15 (Fargo, North Dakota) — originating station
- May 1985 - c. 1995
- Syndicated on American Independent Network (AIN)
- Package of "about 18 shows" aired to millions of viewers on many stations in about 40 states, including:
- WNHW-TV, independent Channel 28 (Hartford-New Haven, Connecticut)
- 1994-95
- NOTES:
- E-gorespondent David Windhorst provided the initial information for this entry with these memories:
A couple years ago I was living in a house in the mountains with an old Cape Canaveral-style satellite dish,
and used to get the feed from this strange little thing called AIN, the American Independent Network.
From somewhere in Texas they ran truly obscure stuff —
a lot of 50s teleseries that nobody else wanted, and plenty of ads for chiropractors.
But they also showed "Mad Frank" (sic)
a couple afternoons and evenings per week... at least, I think they did.
My wife never seemed to be around to witness that anything so
hilariously amateurish could actually stow away on the air, so maybe I imagined it.
Apparently AIN had just a handful of episodes, because the only films I can actually remember seeing, several times, are
Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Triffids, and Corman's The Terror.
Frank had a couple moronic nerdy friends who'd stop by, a little doll whose voice he threw, and maybe a windup toy or two.
- The following information is based on a discussion group post by Michael O'Brien,
with additional memories of the show from subsequent e-mail:
Channel 28 only carried the show for a few weeks, a pity.
I think it was syndicated and either parents complained because
it was a horror movie show in prime time, or else it was too expensive for them to carry.
The show began with slow music as Madd Frank entered a building and slowly descended endless stairs to his studio.
He wore dark clothing, a Homburg hat or something and a dark overcoat, cape like affair.
He had corpse-type makeup like something out of Carnival of Souls.
His deliver was the typical stuff, bad jokes with the punchlines emphasized with drumbeats, you know.
He didn't have much in the way of odd props or odd characters on his show, but a few, it's hard to remember.
The movies he showed were bottom of the budget barrel from the 50s and 60s, like The Corpse Grinders.
- James L. McIntyre of Grand Rapids, Minnesota
contributed some great stuff about this host (including correcting the spelling of his name) as follows:
I happen to know a lot about MADD FRANK.
That's with two D's!
Real name: Kent Kamron.
Station owner of five or six small UHF stations
(see corrections in following notes — E-gor).
KVRR was the main location.
He had two camera's for the show.
The third was broken, or being repaired, or was on location, or was stolen, or was leased to another station, etc.
There were only two cameras, but I loved the reasons why the third was never there!
Miss Frizzy was the doll.
George was the skull/candle he would light up at the beginning of every show!
Harvey was always in his casket.
The Madd Programmer was responsible for the movie, always an unknown or a bad movie.
I am playing a tape of his show now!
It's dated 1994.
The movie is House of the Seven Corpses, not half-bad!
The Madd Programmer must not have been feeling well that week!
Ichy Bodd was from the medieval period.
Billy Jabber would Jabber on and he always wore an old tank helmet from World War II.
Dr. Phil O'dendron was always examining things like dead house plants, Madd Programmer's teeth, it depended on the movie being shown.
Other films shown were
Attack of the Giant Leeches,
The Terror.
Horror Express, etc.
Most of the films were usually public domain films, or films he could legally broadcast.
They even showed Gremlins at Christmas!
The year before it was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
KVRR was located in Fargo, North Dakota, my former childhood neighborhood!
The basement was the studio's basement/dungeon!
Little Shop of Horrors was shown and it even featured a cameo starring Madd Frank!
Carrier Chicken delivered the fan mail.
My biggest regret was not getting the Madd Frank poster when it was available.
- Steve Iverson (aka CultTVman) recalls:
They apparently syndicated the shows in the early 80's
(early 90's — E-gor).
At one point the guy playing Frank had a heart attack and was
replaced by an assistant for several weeks.
- Mike Leiboff sent more info and clarified Madd Frank's show credit:
Just so happens I know the "real" Madd Frank.
Contrary to what the credits told us, his real name wasn’t Kent Kamron.
Those are the first names of his real-life children.
His real name is Delray Dvorachek.
He is still living in Fargo and you might see him driving around town in a early ’60s caddy convertible.
He runs an ad agency in Fargo and has for many years.
One of the reasons he stopped doing the TV stuff was he actually ran out of public domain stuff.
- Best of all, MADD FRANK himself (!!!) e-mailed comments and corrections on the notes above when he found information about his old show on this site.
Here are some notes cobbled together and slightly edited from several of his e-mails:
Hi, E-gor,
Madd Frank here.
I plugged in my old stage name, and your site, along with a few others came up.
Glad to see there is some nostalgia floating around about me.
Some of the information I read about is true, some close to accurate.
I did not own any TV stations, just was the host of Madd Frank Presents.
My real name is not Kent Kamron.
That was the name I used in the credits for the show, but it is the name of my two boys, and a pseudoname for the western short stories I write.
I did have a heart attack, and Ichy Bod took over for a few weeks while I was recovering, but that was December 6, 1986, a day that will go down in INFAMY!
Ichy Bodd and I wrote all of the syndicated shows that the public may have seen on the air.
The early shows were written by various other people, several by Vanilla White, who went wild whenever she ever got vowels sent to her.
All of us that were on the show are still living here in Fargo:
- The Madd Programmer (James Erickson), a good friend and a real character in real life, was the supposed culprit who dug up the films.
He currently works for a radio company here in Fargo.
- Ichy Bodd (Martin Jonason) was my main sidekick and critic of the films.
I see him weekly.
The two of us are collaborating on a variety of projects, mostly two filmscripts, which we are diligently trying to produce.
- Billy Jabber (Dave Prentice) who wore the ancient football helmet was the mechanic, a talker and a talented fellow on the guitar.
He played with THE UGLIES, a band group around this area for many years.
- Dr. Phil O'dendron (Bill Flint), our roving character, works at WalMart.
- Vanilla White (Judy Rae), our lovely blond, plays piano here in various places.
- I was the voice of Harvey. He was in an upright casket where I hung up my cape.
I always told him not to view the movie because it was too gory.
No one ever saw Harvey.
- I did the voice of Miss Frizzy (the doll) and George (the skull/candle).
The heyday of the series was from 1985 -1995.
I had 18 films out to various AIN independent TV stations, and although the program aired in over 40 states and to millions of viewers,
alas, I never made a dime from any of it,
Strangely enough, the show was hijacked off of satellite,
since I often ran across people who claimed they had seen the show in places where we knew the show had not been syndicated.
Life goes on.
I have given up the Madd Frank days.
Though I at one time thought the show might make a splash, I could never hook up with the right people.
If someone asked me to make a comeback as Madd Frank, I doubt I would do it.
That required a lot of physical strain, too, talking with my MF voice, laughing that crazy Great Gildersleeve echo, etc.
Anyway, I'm on to my next phase....
I am content to write nowadays.
I spend at least 30 hours a week composing on a computer.
As Kent Kamron, I have two collections out, which can be ordered from my website,
WWW.DKDBOOKS.COM:
Charlie's Gold and Other Frontier Tales and
A Time for Justice and Other Frontier Tales.
I have a third collection due out in early 2005 entitled The Dime Novel Man and Other Frontier Tales.
Under my Christian name, Delray K. Dvoracek, I have two novels out (also available from WWW.DKDBOOKS.COM).
The first, entitled
The Baltic Sea Incident,
is an Air Force/adventure story based on my work as a Russian linguist flying reconnaissance missions from 1960-63 in Frankfurt, Germany.
The second novel is
The Prague Double, an espionage/adventure set in Germany, the U.S. and obviously, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
I have a third novel coming out next year, another espionage/adventure entitled
The Mirror Man, a modern-day novel.
I won a novel contest with this work and also won third in a screenplay contest with the same name and am seeking an agent for it.
I always had an ad agency (Del Agency & Associates) in Fargo and still run it.
I have one major account, a food store, and write screenscripts for some businesses, which I desire to work with.
I've been married to the same wonderful woman for 37 years — VERLENE JOY, THE JOY OF MY LIFE!
She is the head of the ESL (English as a Second Language) department here in Fargo.
I have two boys:
Kamron, the oldest, is an electrician in Minneapolis;
Kent, the youngest, teaches English at the U. of Won Ju in South Korea.
I used to ride horse quite often, thus the interest in writing western short stories,
and my wife and I toured around on a Goldwing motorcycle, but those are a couple interests that have gone by the wayside.
I have a 65 DeVille Caddi convertible, which I used in some of the opens and many of the closes of the shows.
I think I will put it up for sale, now that it is in excellent running condition.
I thank all of the fans who still remember the show and all its quirky humor.
We all loved producing the show, which usually consisted of about 24 minutes of shtick in between the movie segments.
We usually produced the entire show within four hours time, always rushed, but I was blessed with a crowd of guys and gals who had good chemistry.
Those were absolutely the most fun days I ever had.
My regards to you all,
Madd Frank
- John Hane discovered another great letter from the Maddman himself posted
on the Horrorhosts.com website;
go to the
Contact Us page (2004 News),
under the title "MADD FRANK CHECKS IN!"
to check out the full text, along with lots of other fascinating info from and about horror hosts.
Here are some juicy additional details (sometimes slightly paraphrased) from that note:
"Good evening.
Welcome to Madd Frank Presents.
Let me hang up my cape and we'll talk about tonight's spooky movie."
That's the way the episodes used to begin.
I began shooting the show in May of 1985, continued over the years through 1995 or so.
I believe we did about 350 shows in all. For the first several movies, I'd usually invent a few things to do and ad lib my way through during the breaks.
A few years into the show, we took on Vanilla White (counter part to Vanna White) who wrote many of the episodes.
Vanilla (Judy Rae in real person) lives here in Fargo, plays piano evenings around town.
Of the regular characters, Ichy Bodd, my good buddy, does photography and teaches acting and voice.
Billy Jabber, the guy with the l940's football helmet does karaoke around Fargo.
The Madd Programmer works for Public TV here in town, and Dr. Phil O'dendron works at Walmart.
Bill Flint, his real name, did a year on the circuit as a stand up comedian.
I taught college for several years in the foreign language department at Moorhead State (German and Russian).
Lost my job because of tenure and falling enrollments back in 1974 or so.
I taught part-time mass communications for several years at the same school, had a heart attack in December of 1986,
and that's when Ichy Bodd took over the show for a few weeks until after I recovered.
Had triple bypass, but never had a problem since.
I copyrighted about 18 shows from 94-95, circulated them around to AIN network,
have probably appeared in at least forty states, but never made a dime. That's show biz for you.
Some years back I wrote a half hour skit for Halloween and started off by coming up out of the stage basement
(of the Fargo Theatre) playing the mighty Wurlitzer organ.
It was the first time I ever performed on the organ, though I play piano, violin, guitar, accordian and some saxophone.
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The pseudonymous
"Kent Kamron" as
Madd Frank, presenter of
horror movies in Fargo, ND.
Click image to see the autographed photo it's cropped from.
Madd Frank and most of his show cohorts,
including Ichy Bodd, Dr. Phil O'Dendron,
Billy Jabber, The Madd Programmer,
George the skull/candle and Miss Frizzy.
Click image for a larger view of this photo
(signed by Ichy Bodd and Madd Frank).
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