Darren Frost – Dead Inside

Dead Inside
Darren Frost
Stand-up Comedy DVD
60 minutes plus Extras
Independent Release

Like children in BBQ sauce Darren Frost is an acquired taste. Taped at Yuk Yuks, Dead Inside is the comic s third independent stand-up comedy DVD. This is nasty stuff but not quite as nasty as previous efforts, not that Frost has lost his touch or the DVD is the lesser for it. Dead Inside features a one-hour show and two hours of special features.

No other comic could come up with a joke where the umbilical cord becomes a bungee cord. Comics who have kids all do jokes about being a parent but only Frost makes fatherhood about finding an alibi for why you kid’s face hit your fist nine times and understanding Space Chimps.

Darren Frost has a good eye for life’s absurdities. His very short bit on call centers in third world countries makes you both think and laugh.

No one has ever accused this stand-up comic of being subtle but he can be when it comes to social commentary. The premise for the fucking the mattress bit is proof of that. Don’t worry though, Frost gets immediately nastier with a surreal bit that leads to a family intervention on a 14 year old s vagina.

Darren Frost Dead Inside features a version of the beheading routine that got Frost some natonal visibility. Unfortunately he defuses it almost immediately by deconstructing the joke.

Not that it spoils the fun. The midget vs. hippo and chicken wings bits bring the audience back to the dark recesses of Darren Frost’s caustic mind.

The following section was revised after Frost called me on lazy assing the special features part of the review and just surfing through them. He was right to do so.

Special features on this stand-up comedy DVD ring up to about two hours. The 20 Years of Regret section is a series of archival clips of Frost doing stand-up. The comedy is good once you get used to an early version of Frost akin to Lou Costello on PCP. This allows viewers to see a comic evolving through various styles. This section includes an excellent 2005 Just For Laughs Nasty Show and a clip from a 7-minute Vancouver Yuk Yuks performance that got him banned from the club.

The other clips include a heckler incident in Kingston, a talking head bit about Just For Laughs, Toronto 2010 which is a dark bit about the lady who faked having cancer, a 2010 bit in Kitchener, and  Frost addressing the controversy about his bit about the Winnipeg bus beheading.

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