Brain Smasher... A Love Story
Brain Smasher... A Love Story
Sam Crain, a professional model, is asked by her sister to smuggle a package from Europe to Portland Oregon, where she discovers that her sister is battling Chinese Shaolin Monks (not ninjas!). Fleeing the monks, Sam unwittingly involves Ed "Brainsmasher" Molloy, a nightclub bouncer.
Jacob O’Neal reviewedJuly 24, 2025
A model, a bouncer, a flower that grants ultimate power, Chinese martial artists everyone calls ninjas and lots of weird stuff in Albert Pyun’s forgotten movie starring Andrew “Dice” Clay and Teri Hatcher. I was never really a fan of the Dice man, and the controversy around him that killed this movie, but the movie itself is strangely fun and goofy.
Dice plays a bouncer nicknamed Brain Smasher. Teri Hatcher is Sam, a fashion model with a botanist sister who has a one of a kind lotus that, rumor has it, will give you power over everything. This means that a group of Chinese villains has been chasing the sister (Deborah Von Valkenberg of The Warriors and Too Close For Comfort) and so she sent the flower to Sam. In turn, Sam was tasked with smuggling the flower into Portland, Oregon. Sam arrives and nearly dies escaping the non-ninjas (running joke throughout the film) where she meets the Brain Smasher. He gets pulled into her fight and helps her protect the flower. Then there’s the cops played by Tim Thomerson of Trancers fame and Nicholas Guest of Saturday Night Live.
The movie was not smart or well made, but there’s something about Pyun films. He’s the same guy who made Cyborg and other low budget action, scifi and horror films. The characters were poorly written, but Clay and Hatcher made the most of it, even if his hair length changes constantly through the movie, making me wonder if there were reshoots done or if it was just a ridiculous continuity issue. Essentially, I enjoyed this movie and had a lot of fun with it. I know it’s technically garbage, but it doesn’t stink.