Barbara is a young woman who faces an incredibly stressful situation. While visiting her mother's grave with her brother, she is suddenly attacked by an unknown assailant. John, her brother, fights the attacker, but when he is injured, Barbara runs away, hiding in a nearby farmhouse and discovering even more gruesome horrors. Her fate appears sealed until the fortuitous arrival of Ben, destroys the lumbering monsters. He then proceeds to lock and board the entrances. Ben tries to help Barbara snap out of shock, so that she can survive the night along with him.In the original1968 film, Barbara is never able to manage this, and remains in a semi-catatonic state most of the time. She refuses to accept the death of her brother, and is ultimately attacked and dragged out of the farmhouse by his reanimated corpse. In the 1990 remake, the renamed Barbara character is tough, and smarter than Ben or any of the others in the farmhouse. She points out that the zombies are slow, and that it would be possible to run or even walk past them to safety. She dresses like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, and manages to be the one survivor of the terrible night.In the gaiden film A Chemical Skyline, Barbara is shown driving with her brother in the car and at the very end of the film, she is in the graveyard with Johnnie right before he is attacked. We are left unsure of her situation or whether she would be the fighting Barbara or the catatonic Barbara.