Barbra, also known as Barbara, is the false protagonist and deuteragonist of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. A young woman who was visiting a cemetery at the time of the outbreak, Barbra and her brother Johnny were attacked by the living dead. Barbra managed to escape to a farmhouse, where she stayed with several other survivors. Her trauma left her catatonic for most of the film. While attempting to escape the incoming zombies, Barbra was paralyzed by the sight of her now-zombified brother and was dragged away by the hordes, leaving her fate unknown.
Barbara is later the main protagonist of its 1990 remake. After losing her brother to the living dead, Barbara escapes to a farmhouse and meets Ben, a fellow survivor. Though Barbara is initially catatonic, she quickly picks herself up and starts to toughen herself up to survive the outbreak.
Night of the Living Dead (1968 Romero-Russo film)[]
Barbra is the female lead and deuteragonist of the original 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead. In the film, Barbra and her brother Johnny visit their long-deceased father at a cemetery in Pennsylvania. During their visit, the pair have a disturbing encounter with a shambling stranger. After witnessing Johnny hit his head on a gravestone, Barbra flees the stranger and finds a nearby farmhouse as shelter.
While searching the house, she found a corpse on the second floor with its head skinned down to the bone. Horrified, Barbra rushes from the house but is immediately blinded by headlights. Ben, a fellow survivor, guides her back into the house and kills the hostile strangers. Barbra attempts to assist him in barricading the house but soon falls into a catatonic state.
Barbra listens to the radio as Ben fortifies the house. Ben shares his first encounter with the ghouls and she recounts her experience in the cemetery. Barbra becomes agitated and confused before trying to leave the house to find Johnny. When Ben tries to convince her that her brother is dead, Barbra goes into a blind rage and strikes him. Ben strikes Barbra, knocking her unconscious, and places her on the sofa before turning his attention to the ghouls outside.
After coming to, and returning to a calm state, Ben went upstairs to search for any other supplies. While waiting for Ben to return, Barbra notices that the door of the cellar is open and screams in fear, causing Ben to rush down and stand to protect her. Upon looking in the cellar, the pair realize that there are no zombies, but more survivors; the Cooper family, consisting of Harry Cooper, his wife Helen and their young daughter Karen, and teen lovers Tom and Judy. When the arguing between Ben and Harry start, more and more of the zombies heard them and started approaching the house. A television is set up, where the news broadcast revealed that the bodies of the dead were being reanimated by an unknown force and began feeding on the living.
After Ben's plan to refuel his truck with the pump outside resulted in the truck exploding and the deaths of Tom and Judy, Barbra suggested that they leave the farmhouse, pointing out that the zombies were quite slow and had very limited mobility. When zombies started breaking into the house from every window and door, Barbra tried to help Ben keep the front door barricaded, until she saw her brother, now a zombie, breaking the door down. Frozen in fear, she let Johnny drag her away into the crowd of zombies where she was presumably devoured off-screen.[1]
Reboot franchise[]
Night of the Living Dead (1990)[]
Barbra in 1990 remake
In Tom Savini's 1990 remake of the 1968 Night, Barbra is renamed "Barbara", and is much more in line with her characterization in the original Night's early script. At the beginning of the undead apocalypse, Johnny and Barbara visit their mother's grave in the Pennsylvanian cemetery. Noticing his sister's fear of graves, Johnny childishly teases her by claiming that the approaching man nearby is a zombie who comes to get her. Unamused, Barbara walks up to the man to apologize for her brother's antics, only to see him too catatonic to notice his surroundings, simply walking away all while muttering "I'm sorry", much to the siblings' confusion. That is when an actual zombie ambushes her, prompting Johnny to rush to defend her. Unfortunately, he died in the attempt, but nonetheless managed to buy Barbara some time to flee.
Barbara is unable to escape in her car due to a second zombie and the previous one breaking through the windshield, causing it to crash. With no way to escape, she is forced to take refuge in a nearby farmhouse and locks the pursuing zombies out. A falling severed hand informs her that not even the farmhouse is safe, as another zombie closes in for the kill followed by the other two who enter the unlocked back door, forcing her to flee. Fortunately, Ben arrives in his truck, ramming through the zombie who killed Johnny. Exiting the car, he notices the traumatized Barbara and snaps her out of her hysterical state before dragging her back into the farmhouse. Just as Ben takes out one of remaining zombies within, Barbara takes all her anger to deal the other in which she finally did with a fatal blow on his skull with a nearby fire poker.
Carefully disposing her kill with Ben aiding her, Barbara listens in as the latter explained outside world's situation from what he heard in his car's radio, his discovery of the way to properly kill a zombie during a chaos in diner he visited early on (which intrigues her as it explained how she took out the aforementioned zombie), and his conclusion where the outbreak being the result of some unknown force. Remembering the ambush from the second floor, Barbara warns Ben as the latter investigates upstairs for a gun shortly after finding some ammo in one of the rooms. To her relief, the latter finds what he is looking for within the grasp of a mangled corpse who apparently used it to shoot himself in the head. It is when other survivors (Harry Cooper, a selfish and argumentative husband; his wife Helen; their daughter Sarah, who was bitten by a zombie and has fallen seriously ill; and teenage lovers Tom Bitner and Judy Rose Larson) emerge from the basement, alarming Barbara that she attacks them on sight all while screaming to get Ben's attention before they eventually calm themselves a bit and reassess their situation.
Listening to the group uneasily relate to one another regarding their respective encounter with zombies where some of them used to be those they knew in life (except the irritable Harry), Barbara soon notices a zombie approaching the house on the outside prompting Ben to suggest to fortify their shelter which has alternate escape routes in favor of Harry's idea to hid in the cellar instead. Barbara takes the initiative by starting to work on boarding doors and windows as Harry argues with Ben again before storming back into the cellar to tend to his wife and daughter below. Not long after Tom and Judy follow suit, she has a second thought about their current plan upon noticing the zombies' limited mobility which supposedly allows one to easily outmaneuver them only for her suggestion to be shot down by Ben in favor of the current one. Little did they knew the loud construction attracts more zombies than they could handle.
While taking her time changing her clothes before resuming the task at hand, Barbara notes things don't go any better among the group. Two of the invading zombies break through barricaded door and window respectively and one of them, whom Judy recognizes as Mr. Magruder is more successful that Barbara and Ben had to finish him at that instance. Exasperated by some of her fellow survivors' apparent denial over the prospect of their reanimated loved ones are indeed gone like Mr. Magruder, Barbara screams some sense of them by wasting three of her ammo on another attacking zombie which predictably shrugs them off before eventually headshots him.
As Ben returns to the house and see things dissolve into chaos, Barbara finds herself dealing the insane Harry who wrestles her gun from his grip. To add insult to injury, Sarah has reanimated and subsequently killed her mother at this point before making her way upstairs, inciting a violent shootout between her denial father and Ben. Thankfully, Barbara finds another gun from a fallen reanimated officer nearby to kill the reanimated Sarah as Harry retreats upstairs to the attic. Now the last survivor standing, Barbara leaves the house alone and easily elude the undead horde, proving Ben wrong about her rejected idea earlier. Before long, she encounters a group of countryside posse who just cleared up the area she entered, pleasantly surprising them. Still, it's a bittersweet turns of events for her as among zombies the same posse vanquished was Johnny.
The next day, Barbara awakes from few hours of night rest surrounded by the safety of the media and townspeople. Noticing some hillbillies playing around with a couple of zombies, she comments on the similarities between the living and the undead. Joining the posse in the farmhouse she escaped from, Barbara meets up two of countrymen she just befriended as they break into the basement. Ben, who died of his wounds and has been reanimated, promptly emerges from the basement before gazing at Barbara, giving an opening for her initially startled allies to finish them off. Still processing her loss, the relieved yet delirious Harry shows up, prompting Barbara to kill him and inform her allies the vigilantes they have "another one for the fire". The film ends as Barbara hypnotically watches the bodies being burned in the fire.[2]
Fate[]
Though Barbra's fate is left unknown in the original film, a series of future installments elaborated on the character's final fate.
Night of the Living Dead[]
The official Night of the Living Dead comic series revealed that Barbra was turned into a zombie after she was dragged away. She is later joined by the zombified Johnny, Karen, and the rest of the undead as they kill other survivors in the Pittsburgh area before wandering off.
Barbara's Zombie Chronicles[]
In an unofficial spin-off comic series published by Avatar, Barbara's Zombie Chronicles, Barbara survived the farmhouse and went from becoming a damsel in distress to a brave, tough as nails, kick-ass fighter.
Ultimate Night of the Living Dead[]
In another unofficial separate comic series published by Double Takes, Ultimate Night of the Living Dead, Johnny, who was unconscious back in the cemetery, found Barbra in the farmhouse and rescued her by posing as a zombie. This story is set in 1966 as opposed to 1968, it is also non-canon.
Night of the Living Dead: Genesis[]
In the unofficial 2017 sequel Night of the Living Dead: Genesis, Barbra is revealed to be alive, with Judith O'Dea reprising her role. George Romero did not direct the sequel nor is it produced by John Russo.
Personality[]
1968 film[]
Little is known about Barbra's personality before the outbreak, but she had a fear of cemeteries and constantly bickered with her brother Johnny. After losing her brother to the living dead, Barbra became catatonic and helpless for the majority of the film, relying on Ben to help her get through the ordeal. As the film reaches its climax, Barbra becomes more proactive upon realizing that they will no longer be safe in the farmhouse, and suggests that the remaining survivors try to escape.
The original Living Dead script featured a more proactive version of Barbra, but Judith O'Dea made changes to her performance based on her interpretation of the character. Feminist activists criticized Barbra for being "catatonic and helpless", and Jacob Trussell of Film School Rejects decried Barbra as "vacuous," and "a frustrating impediment (who is) disengaged from the story as an obtuse wilting flower, glued to a couch, unwilling to lend a hand.”[3] The early version of the character was reinstated to both the 1990 remake and the Zombie Chronicles comic. However, recent scholars have come to recognize Barbra's catatonia is a psychological response to the trauma she had endured, and the criticism of her original characterization appears to have lessened over the years.
1990 remake[]
Barbara's personality is meant to be the foil to her original iteration, as she eventually toughened herself up and proved to be the most sensible of the survivors apart from Ben, a change that surprised even him. In addition of rightfully pointed out that the zombies can be outrun due to being too slow (an idea that rejected by the others but what saved her in the end), she does her best to be the voice of reason among the group, attempting to ease the tension between them to no avail.
However, the ordeal Barbara endured had since hardened her and made her more cynical than she used to be, remarking the dead not being so different from the living upon the sight of hillbillies playing with the zombies. She even killed Harry in retaliation over learning that he murdered Ben, and after killing him she coldly remarked to the vigilantes that there was "another one for the pyre".
Portrayal[]
Nineteen year-old Judith Riley, the then-receptionist of Hardman Associates, originally tried out for the role of Barbra, but was given the "less demanding" role of Judy instead. The twenty-three year-old Judith O'Dea was later cast in the role. O'Dea had previously worked for Hardman and Eastman in Pittsburgh, and was in Hollywood seeking entry to the movie business when she auditioned. O'Dea remarked in an interview that while she was always terrified of horror films, starring in the film was a positive experience for her.
Trivia[]
- One fan theory suggests that Barbara (Judith O'Dea) was bitten during her first encounter with a ghoul and her behavior is the result of the bite's effects.
- There is an ongoing debate about the spelling of this character's name (Barbra vs. Barbara). She is listed on certain script drafts as Barbra and other drafts as Barbara. IMDB lists Judith O'Dea's original portrayal of the character in the 1968 film as "Barbra", and Patricia Tallman's portrayal from the 1990 film as "Barbara."
Gallery[]
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References[]
- ↑ Night of the Living Dead (dir. George A. Romero; October 1, 1968)
- ↑ Night of the Living Dead (dir. Tom Savini; October 19, 1990)
- ↑ https://filmschoolrejects.com/patricia-tallman-barbara/