Featuring three Frank Henenlotter films in a row – first Basket Case, followed by Brain Damage – I’m finishing off this tattoo list trilogy with Frankenhooker.
Frankenhooker is Henenlotter’s homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
While attending Elizabeth’s father’s birthday party, an automatic lawnmower gifted by her fiancé Jeffrey leads to Elizabeth’s sudden and tragic death. Jeffrey can’t live without Elizabeth and decides to harvest body parts of prostitutes to create for her a new body.
Jeffrey develops “super crack” which a number of prostitutes smoke and then explode into pieces. He sews the required pieces together, attaches Elizabeth’s head and then uses lightning to bring her back to life. With the unexpected consequences of awkward facial expressions and limited vocabulary, Elizabeth participates in sex work, however the men explode when getting intimate with the Frankenhooker.
Later, Jeffrey’s death leads to Elizabeth doing as he did to her, attaching his head to the body parts of prostitutes, thus becoming the fiancé of Frankenhooker.
There’s certainly a lot of love for this film considering the amount of Frankenhooker tattoos I was able to find. Be wary of your choice of tattoo artist – you want a quality tattoo and not one which looks like it was applied with a lawnmower rather than a tattoo machine.
The Tattooed Archivist 
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