Darren Frost – Better Left Unsaid

Better Left Unsaid
Darren Frost
Stand-up Comedy DVD
Independent Release 2008
3 hours
Buy at Frosty’s website

Darren Frost is to comedy what The Exorcist is to movies. This is the stand-up comic who has figured out how to tell if the animal you are fucking has consented. Better Left Unsaid, Frost’s second independent release stand-up comedy DVD features 3 hours of shows and extras. The obvious pun here is you get a good bang with your …, here it comes, … buck.

The main feature of this Darren Frost DVD is a one hour show at Yuk Yuks in Mississauga, Ontario in 2008. Though faced with a lukewarm and not particularly bright crowd Frost manages to push the envelope a bit on Better Left Unsaid As always, anything is fair game and often outrageous though there are a few serious comments behind some of the jokes, especially when it comes to what makes the news.

Perhaps I have become somewhat jaded when it comes to stand-up comedy but the squirm factor in the main feature was a bit below my expectations. This is without any doubt a solid performance and Frost is very funny. I just did not get that ice cold shiver up my spine. Still, his material about the 8-limbed baby from India, the 3-handed Chinese baby and his future in adult movies, and the 14 year old who killed her parents and her little brother is solid.

Not that every premise in the main feature of Better Left Unsaid is edgy. His no frills grocery store bit is pretty safe stuff though Frost’s attitude makes it funny. The comedian also gets a lot of mileage from his stories about previous shows.

There are a very few weak bits in the main feature, For example, his joke about a radiation oncologist does not have a good punchline.

Production wise this is a four camera job and the show looks pretty good overall. There is the occasional shot where the comic walks out of the frame but this ain’t HBO.

The DVD comes with two other performances in the extra features section. Hammerfight is the video from a disastrous show in Windsor, Ontario in 2005. Headwound is footage from a bad show in Mississauga, also in 2005. This show features Frost’s darkest jokes of the DVD: old folks playing Russian roulette and the raccoon in the garage.

The Bonus Material section includes 15 minutes from the early Yuk Yuks show that did not go so well and Frost pulls a Miles Davis. There is also 20 minutes of bonus jokes and there I got the ice cold shivers I was looking for: Anna Nicole Smith, Mel Gibson, the old folks Russian roulette bit, retard kids, and zombie valentine. There is also a clip of the comic getting assaulted.

Also in extra features is a Talking Heads feature where Frost talks to the camera. Ho hum.

The extra features section itself has strong production values including a nifty tune about killing Karla Homolka.

If you like edgy dark comedy, Darren Frost is your guy. You also have to respect a comic who refuses to give in to ordinary.

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