Kirsty Cotton is the main human protagonist of the Hellraiser franchise, appearing in 2 novellas, four feature films, as well as several comics. She is the daughter of Larry Cotton and the niece of Frank Cotton. She was one of only two characters to face the Cenobite, Pinhead and outwit him.
Literary Biography[]
"The Hellbound Heart"[]
Kirsty was a friend of Rory Cotton who helped him, and his wife Julia, move house. The first time she arrived at the house on Ludovico Street only Julia was present, and she made them both coffee by heating water in a pan on the stove. She was also one of nine guests to attend their housewarming party where she spent much of the evening with Neville, one of Rory's work colleagues.
Rory later expressed his concern about Julia to Kirsty, explaining she was acting strange and refusing to leave the house. When she knocked on the door Julia refused to invite her in however, owing to the fact she had just murdered a man in the spare room in order to help resurect Rory's dead brother, Frank. Before she left however, Kirsty saw the man's coat and concluded that she was having an affair, but decided to make sure she had more evidence before informing Rory.
Returning to watch the house she saw Julia leave and return with Stanley Sykes. Hearing Sykes cry out as he was being attacked by Frank she crept into the house through the back door, only to witness Frank murder him on the stairs. Frank then attacked her and she was only able to escape by using his concern about the Puzzle Box against him, throwing it out of the window. She grabbed the box as she ran out of the house, but fainted soon after.
Awakening in a hospital she unintentionally opened the box and summoned the Cenobites herself, but they agreed to not take Kirsty's soul if she could deliver Frank to them instead. Returning to the house she was greeted by Julia and "Rory", who was actually Frank using his brother's skin as a disguise. She confronted him, during which he stabbed Julia, but was recaptured by the Cenobites when admitting his real identity. When leaving, Kirsty encountered The Engineer who returned the puzzle box to her possession.
Film Biography[]
Kirsty's mother died when she was young. When her father remarried, Kirsty was always leery of her new stepmother Julia, even noticing how her uncle Frank watched the couple intently at their wedding.
Hellraiser[]
When Larry and Julia took up residence at the family's old house, they invited Kirsty to come and stay. However, Kirsty wasn't keen on moving in with her stepmother. Instead, she acquired her own lodgings in town with her boyfriend Steve O'Donnell. Not too long afterward, she suffered a nightmare in which she encountered her father's mutilated corpse. She also began to notice a strange derelict man shadowing her on the streets and at the pet store where she worked.
She further confirmed her suspicions that something was wrong when she eavesdropped on Julia bringing another man to the Cotton house. To her dismay she found Frank, now skinless and undead, draining corpses of their flesh and seeking her next. Seizing a strange box from Frank's room, she fled for her life before fainting in shock several blocks away.
Waking up in a nearby hospital, Kirsty was questioned by the doctors about what had happened and the box she had acquired. While waiting for the police to arrive, Kirsty began to play with the box. Without warning, the wall split open to reveal a shadowy corridor.
As Kirsty tried to frantically close the box, the Cenobites appeared, intent on taking her to their realm. Thinking quickly, she made a deal with them. Having deduced that Frank had encountered the Cenobites and escaped them, Kirsty offered to lead them to Frank if they left her alone. She ran home to try and warn her father, but it was too late: Frank had skinned Larry and assumed his identity. Despite her rage and anguish, she lured Frank upstairs, where the Cenobites arrived and tore him apart.
However, the Cenobites were all too quick to break their end of the agreement. They chained Julia to the her bed’s mattress and mutilated her corpse. They then came for Kirsty, but Kirsty, having retrieved the box from Julia's remains, was able to reverse the sequence she had discovered, closing the gate she had opened and sending the Cenobites back to their realm. Setting fire to Frank's belongings, she tried to burn the box as well but the derelict that had been following her suddenly appeared, snatching the box and revealing himself as yet another Cenobite creature before flying away.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II[]
Following the incident, Kirsty passed out. Police officers brought her and Steve to the Channard Institute, where she was to be held for observation. Unbeknownst to her, the institute's director, Phillip Channard, was a collector of the puzzle boxes and wanted to use her to access the Cenobite realm. While resting, Kirsty began seeing visions of her father, skinned and bleeding, and decided to try and find her father in hell. She befriended a doctor named Kyle McRae and went on the search for her missing father.
Meanwhile, Dr Channard retrieved the bloody mattress from police evidence and tricked a patient into spilling more blood on it, thus resurrecting Julia. Channard used another patient named Tiffany into opening the box and releasing the Cenobites. Arriving at the scene, Kirsty entered the Cenobite realm herself to be confronted by Pinhead and his minions. Kirsty demanded information about her father, only to be flatly told Larry was "in his own hell, and quite unreachable." Rejecting the answer, Kirsty pressed on until she found a simulation of her family's old home. To her dismay, Kirsty found the source of her visions was Frank, who had lured her into his own hell to molest her. Spotting an old photo of Frank on a dresser, Kirsty set fire to it, destroying Frank's image and reducing him to his skinless form.
On her way out, Kirsty encountered Tiffany, who had been left to wander aimlessly about the corridors. As the two made their way back to the outside they were confronted by Julia, but tricked her into a wind tunnel where she was ripped from her own skin. As they exited the Realm and made their way out of the institute, Channard - now transformed into a Cenobite - attacked them. Fleeing back into the Cenobite corridors, Kirsty and Tiffany ran straight into Pinhead's group. However, Kirsty had a surprise for Pinhead. Having found a dossier on a long-missing army captain in Channard's office, Kirsty revealed to pinhead that he had once been that very person. She gave Pinhead a photo of when he was human, triggering Pinhead's memories of his former identity. The cenobites helped Kirsty fight Dr. Channard, but died doing so. However, Kirsty and Tiffany used the distraction to escape and recover the puzzle box, with which they then confronted Leviathan, the silent ruling entity of the Cenobite plane. With the box, they rendered Leviathan inert, then escaped just as the portals slammed shut. Kirsty and Tiffany then left to start a new life and a new beginning.
Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth[]
During her time at the Channard Institute her interviews regarding her interactions with the Cenobites and the Puzzle Box were recorded. Joey Summerskill later watches these recordings during her own investigation into events caused by the Pinhead who had since been revived by the Pillar of Souls.
Hellraiser: Hellseeker[]
Kirsty married Trevor Gooden, who she later realised was not only cheating on her, but also planning to kill her in order to inherit the wealth she herself had inherited as the sole survivor of her family. When Trevor presented her with a LeMarchand Puzzle Box however, she struck another deal with Pinhead, promising to give him five souls in return for keeping her own. She gave him the souls of Trevor's co-worker who was also conspiring to kill her, the three women Trevor had been having affairs with, and finally Trevor himself. She killed Trevor by sterring their moving car off the road and into a river, during which the dying Trevor experienced traumatic visions before being personally claimed by Pinhead himself.
Appearances[]
- Literary
- Film
Trivia[]
- Kirsty is the character who Clive Barker changed the most when adapting "The Hellbound Heart", and was made to be Larry's daughter by a previous marriage, instead of just a friend. This change was also adopted by the novella "Hellraiser: The Toll".
- Kirsty is 26 at the time "The Hellbound Heart" takes place.
- The initial announcement for "The Toll" listed Kirsty's surname as "Singer", though this was never used in the novella itself.[1]
- In "The Toll" Kirsty uses a number of aliases to elude the Cenobites, including "Christina Fidanza".
- In the comics, Kirsty is a cenobite.
- The novel Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell mentions the character Kristen Cotton who was inspired by Kirsty.
Quotes[]
- "You want it?! Fucking have it!!"
- — Kirsty Cotton, Hellraiser
- "Fairy tales ... My father didn't believe in fairy tales either ...Some of them come true, Mr. Ronson. Even the bad ones."
- — Kirsty Cotton, Hellbound: Hellraiser II
- "I only know what it does... It hurts. I don't know. It kind of opens itself. Your fingers move. You learn. It wants to open, that's the thing. And it knows when you want to open it. And it helps. And it opens. And then they come. The Cenobites. The demons. You might think it's delusion, but it's not. I saw them. I looked into their eyes and they looked back at me. Creatures from Hell."
- — Kirsty Cotton, Hellraiser III
- "I hope it's everything you hoped it would be."
- — Kirsty Cotton, Hellraiser: Hellseeker
- "That's for bringing a gun to a hammer fight."
- — Kirsty Cotton, "Hellraiser: The Toll"
Gallery[]
References[]
External links[]
- Kirsty (Hellraiser) at Wikipedia