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| “ | All right, now you tell me! I'm not gonna take that kind of a chance when we've got a safe place! We lock up into a safe place, and you're telling us that we gotta risk our lives just because somebody might need help, huh? | „ |
| ~ Cooper displaying his cowardice and selfishness |
Harry Cooper is the main antagonist of the 1968 horror classic, Night of the Living Dead and its 1990 remake. He is one of the people hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse when the zombie apocalypse hits, and puts his own survival ahead of that of his own wife and daughter.
In the 1968 film, he was portrayed by the late Karl Hardman who also acted as a producer for the film. In the 1990 remake, he was portrayed by the late Tom Towles, who also portrayed Otis in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Grillo in Warriors of Virtue.
Biography[]
1968 film[]
Cooper, his wife Helen, and their young daughter Karen are eating at a diner when the dead start rising from their graves and attacking people. After the zombies turn over their car, Cooper runs with his family and two teenagers, Tom and Judy, to a nearby farmhouse and, at Cooper's insistence, barricade themselves in the cellar - but not before Karen is bitten by a zombie.
Helen hears voices coming from upstairs and wants to investigate, but Cooper forbids it. The voices turn out to be two other survivors, Ben and Barbara. Cooper and Ben take an immediate dislike to each other, with Ben refusing to back down to Cooper's bullying and Cooper ridiculing Ben's plan to get to the gas pump outside the farmhouse, gas up his truck, and get away. Determined to be right at any cost, Cooper orders Helen, Tom, and Judy to stay in the cellar with him, even while they agree with Ben's plan. Eventually, however, Helen stands up to her husband and starts working with Ben, while Cooper reluctantly joins in to help Ben throw makeshift Molotov cocktails at the zombies.
The zombies ultimately break through the barricade, while Tom and Judy are killed when the truck explodes. Cooper locks Ben out of the house and tries to run back into the cellar, but Ben shoots Cooper before he can get away. Badly wounded, Cooper crawls down to the cellar, only to be attacked and killed by Karen, who has died and turned into a zombie. Moments later, Helen discovers the zombiefied Karen chewing on Cooper's corpse, and is so overcome with horror and grief that she cannot move, which allows Karen to kill and eat her as well. Cooper and Helen reanimate as zombies, but Ben, now the last one standing, kills them and Karen, only to be killed himself by a band of locals who mistake him for a zombie.
1990 remake[]
Barbara and Ben find other survivors hiding from the zombies in the farmhouse, including Cooper and his wife and child. As in the original, Cooper thinks everyone should go to the cellar and barricade the door and wait for the police, but Ben believes that would be a horrible idea because it would be a death trap. Then an argument happens between Ben and Cooper and leaves the Coopers in the basement with their sick, zombie-bitten daughter. He viciously abuses his wife both verbally and physically even when she's trying to talk reason with him that they should all work together to live.
Later, he gets out of the basement and tells his wife to go back down to the basement and her daughter needs her, which leads to her death and being reanimated as a zombie. Cooper gets Barbara's gun from her after wrestling her and shoots Ben, badly wounding him, and then runs and hides in the attic. When Barbara returns with a group of locals, the media, and townspeople, Cooper comes out of the attic, hoping they will take him with them. When Barbara sees him, however, she shoots him in the head and kills him. She passes him off as another zombie, telling the other survivors, "Another one for the fire".
Personality[]
In both the original film and the remake, Cooper is portrayed as a selfish, cowardly bully who dominates and abuses his family. Helen despises him, but they remain married for Karen's sake. He also tries to dominate Ben during the zombie apocalypse, and it is suggested that he takes offense at the idea of taking orders from Ben because he is Black. In the remake, he also behaves in a crude, dismissive manner toward Barbara, condescendingly referring to her as "little girl".