Blackenstein opens to a young, Black woman arriving in Los Angeles to solicit the help of a Nobel Prize-winning physician on behalf of her fiance, Eddie Turner. Eddie is a Black veteran who lost all four of his limps to a landmine in Vietnam. The Audience soon discovers that he, also, is in L.A. receiving attention at a veteran’s hospital. Eddie reluctantly agrees to undergo Dr. Stein’s procedure to amalgamate new limbs with his burly torso. The expectation is that, when the procedure is successfully completed, Eddie and Winifred will be married. Dr. Stein has several patients involved in his experimental procedures, some of which experience complicated side effects that work to foreshadow his failure with Eddie.