Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		3.5

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 4, 2026

Quick — name a band featuring siblings which hailed from Hawthorne, California. Easy, right? It has to be The Beach Boys, obviously. Well, yes, but in the "also" category, there's the probably somewhat lesser known niche aggregation Redd Kross. For over a decade from 1962 to 1973, there literally was not one year where The Beach Boys did not have a charting album (often in the Top 10, and even Top 5), and while their charted singles weren't quite that "regular", they still placed an incredible number of hits either near or at the top of the Billboard rankings, at least during the first part of that aforementioned decade or so. It has to be stated frankly that as much as Born Innocent makes a case that the McDonald siblings who founded Redd Kross managed somehow to escape the looming shadow of the Wilsons and their cohort, Redd Kross never even came close to approaching the sales The Beach Boys did, and in fact none of their albums made the US charts, and only one single, Annie's Gone, made an appearance in this country as well, though saliently not on the "mainstream" singles list but instead on the Modern Rock chart. Kind of interestingly, though, Redd Kross had more consistent charting singles in the United Kingdom in particular.

While this is probably the very model of a music documentary designed to appeal to a very specific demographic, Born Innocent is often a revelatory piece that features a number of often quite funny interviews with not just Jeff and Steve McDonald, but any number of other band members (the documentary has a running joke about how many different drummers have played with Redd Kross), as well as others, like the sweet McDonald parents, not to mention the wives of Jeff and Steve, who start the piece out in an appropriately cheeky fashion. Fans will already know this, but for the uninitiated, Jeff is married to Charlotte Caffey from The Go-Go's*, and Steve is married to Anna Waronker from That Dog. Waronker is herself part of Los Angeles show business royalty as the daughter of former Warner Brothers Records President Lenny Waronker (who went on to found DreamWorks Records) and actress Donna Loren, who appeared in some of the mid-sixties teen movies like Beach Blanket Bingo, an idiom which shows up here in the doc as a kind of sidebar to the main story.

But even without the connections through marriage, just the story of the brothers, and at least with regard to one bizarre event in their lives, their parents, is enough to fill this documentary with a number of great anecdotes. That bizarre interlude, which brings Mrs. McDonald almost to tears and leaves Mr. McDonald kind of stuttering and speechless, was the several month disappearance of Steven when he was only 12 or 13, and was more or less abducted by a much older woman known as Dee who had both a professional and personal relationship with the band, and who convinced Steven she was pregnant with his child. The McDonald parents had to hire a private investigator to track down their son, since the police simply assumed he had run away and couldn't offer any substantial help.

Otherwise, while occasionally marauding through "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" territory, Born Innocent is surprisingly free of any real internecine or even intramural drama, though there are some passing swipes taken at various other bands (like Nirvana) by the brothers. The documentary is filled to the brim with talking heads, some quite notable (no pun intended), with many detailing the profound influence Redd Kross had on their own music. Among the bands represented in this assortment are Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Black Flag, Mudhoney and the Circle Jerks, among many others.

*Note: This documentary would make a great double feature accompanying the previously reviewed The Go-Go's.

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (often) in 1.78:1. This is another music documentary aggregated from a hugely disparate number of sources, including some pretty shoddy looking old VHS tapes (I've included screenshots from some of these moments to provide examples), and so there's an unavoidably heterogeneous look to things throughout. That might also be extended to include the generally great looking "contemporary" interview segments, since there are a number of different interview settings for the McDonald brothers in particular where clarity and palette suffusion can be at least somewhat variable. That said, the new material is generally very sharp and well detailed looking.

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio. This is another music centered documentary where the surround track can admittedly only offer interstitial engagement of the side and rear channels since so much of the archival video has limited (I'm presuming often mono) audio. Some of the newer material can open up the proceedings, but this is frankly a piece where a standard stereo track probably would have sufficed. With some slack granted for the older archival moments, fidelity is fine and certainly all of the talking head material is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Commentary with Jeff McDonald, Steven McDonald and Andrew Reich


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 1:33)

Disc Two: Special Features

• 1. Beginnings - Expanded (HD; 8:04)


• 2. Desperate Teenage Lovedolls and Lovedolls Superstar (HD; 15:07)


• 3. Digging in Jeff's Record Closet (HD; 18:31)


• 4. Kim Shattuck Interview (HD; 31:50)


• 5. The McDonald Brothers Unplugged (HD; 41:17)


• 6. Neurotica Expanded (HD; 8:38)


• 7. The Naz Pad (HD; 2:05)


• 8. Naz Pad Rehearsal Jan 1989 (HD; 52:42)


• 9. Polliwog Park Concert (HD; 5:09)


• 10. The Posh Boy Era Expanded (HD; 10:35)


• 11. Red Cross to Redd Kross According to Steve and Jeff (HD; 9:13)


• 12. Redd Kross on Media Blitz (HD; 12:27)


• 13. Roman Coppola's Original 16mm 1976 Music Video Footage (HD; 3:56)


• 14. Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena (HD; 4:49)


• 15. Santa Monica Pier Concert (HD; 4:29)


• 16. Santa Monica Post Screening Q&A (HD; 30:09)


• 17. Spirit of 76 Expanded (HD; 5:47)


• 18. Steve Breaks Down Every Redd Kross Record (HD; 27:48)


• 19. Teen Babes From Monsanto Expanded (HD; 12:32)


• 20. Third Eye Expanded (HD; 1:46)


• 21. The Tourists Reunion Concert (HD; 13:17)


• 22. The Tourists Reunion Rehearsal (HD; 12:36)

Note: There is a Play All option for the above supplements. The supplements feature LPCM 2.0 audio.

The keepcase encloses two postcards fashioned from old concert posters. A four page leaflet offers some thoughts from Andrew Reich. Packaging features a slipcover.

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My decades long research into actress Frances Farmer means I have been contacted regularly (as in regularly) by diehard Nirvana and/or Kurt Cobain fans wanting more information, courtesy of Nirvana's Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle. That made some of the sidebar material in this piece especially interesting for me, and while this is, as mentioned above, probably geared toward a very specific fanbase, there's enough "general" content here to make Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story accessible and appealing. Technical merits are solid (with an understanding that there's a lot of archival material included), and the supplements are outstanding. Recommended.