Redbox mix-up: Family gets X-rated movie instead of comedy



Dixon, Calif. - A Dixon family got an inappropriate surprise when the DVD they rented from a Redbox turned out to be a pornographic movie.

"Definitely not what I was expecting that night," David Morris told Fox 40.

Morris told FOX40 he went to Walmart in Dixon to rent a movie from Redbox after he and his wife put their two little boys to bed Saturday night. He was trying to rent the action-comedy "Central Intelligence," but the movie he went home with had a lot more action than he was expecting.

"Right away it went into a triple-X movie. It went right into the scenes. It was pretty obvious what was going on," Morris said.

Whoever returned the questionable DVD to the Redbox machine went to great lengths to prank a recipient at random. They printed a fake DVD label that looked exactly like the "Central Intelligence" label and glued it to the pornographic movie. It was only after Morris stopped the movie and ejected it from his DVD player that he noticed the edges of the label were peeling up.

"It was (called) WWW.MostShockingSex.com, and there was a big explicit sign on it. I only peeled it back about half way," Morris said.

The most shocking thing about the incident, Morris said, was the genre of porn on the DVD.

"It wasn't a typical porno movie. It was old people in their sixties or seventies. That's what shocked us. We thought it was a bad preview for some cheesy movie. But as it progressed we were like, 'No, this is the real deal.' So we stopped it. And we took it out of the DVD player," Morris said.

Morris said he and his wife were upset that their kids, or anyone else's kids for that matter, could have been subjected to viewing pornography. However, since they did not, Morris said they thought the incident was funny, and they were more disappointed in Redbox's customer service.

"They didn't even say sorry. They just kept offering me more credits for movies, after I asked to talk to a manager. I didn't want anymore credits. I wanted to know how this happened," Morris said.

FOX40 reached out to the corporate office for Redbox and did not hear back from them. However, a Redbox customer service representative told FOX40 over the phone that in order to get that bad DVD out of circulation, a technician would have to physically remove it from the machine. Since Morris called to report the problem, they said it was documented, and the DVD should have been removed as soon as possible.

"I felt guilty returning it like, what if someone else gets it. But I tried to re-rent it and it didn't let me," Morris said.