13 Horror Movie Heroines That Kick Butt
Barbara Blair (Patricia Tallman) in Night of the Living Dead (Image via Columbia Pictures)
5.) Barbara Blair (Night of the Living Dead)
This is the second remake on the list, and for good reason. After George Romero wrote and directed the 1968 cult hit, Night of the Living Dead, he inadvertently created a cultural juggernaut. Before this film, a “zombie” was a distinct voodoo concept. A voodoo “bokor”, essentially an evil priest, could claim that he possessed the ability to raise the dead. The resulting walking corpse was then ordered to do the bokor’s bidding.
After Night of the Living Dead, however, the zombie became a creature of horror and science fiction. The undead in Romero’s film had a more natural, though no less terrifying origin. This gave way to the zombie of modern pop culture. The 1968 film specifically dictated many of the zombie rules we now hold as gospel.
In the original film, Barbara Blair (Patricia Tallman) is pretty helpless. After her brother is attacked by a zombie, Barbara somehow manages to make it to a (relatively) safe house with a few other survivors. For the rest of the movie, she sits in a near-catatonic state and meets a predictably horrific end.
In the 1990 remake (directed by Tom Savini, who did many of the makeup and practical effects for Romero’s movies), Barbara Blair is very different. She starts off as a bit of pushover, but quickly overcomes her timidness in the face of a looming apocalypse. That’s no accident. Romero and Savini reportedly wanted to create a female character that more accurately reflected what women could do.
This Barbara is briefly traumatized, but soon bounces back and becomes one of the strongest and most sane characters in the film. She even manages to escape the isolated farmhouse and finds help – though everyone else in her group has already died. Barbara, at least, survives.