Dollhouse 'Stage Fright' *HQ Web Rip*

Echo's attempts to protect a nihilistic pop star named Rayana (played by Jaime Lee Kirchner) are complicated when fellow dollhouse agent Sierra (played by Dichen Lachman) who has been programmed to be Rayana's #1 fan is kidnapped by the psycho who is stalking the singer. When the bratty singer refuses to help save her, Echo knocks her out cold with a folding chair and kidnaps her to offer as bait to exchange Rayana for Sierra. A tense meeting on the catwalks high above the stage unfolds...

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Sasha's Favorites of 2012

It's a bit cliche, but as this year draws to a close I thought I'd list my 10 favorite posts. All categories were considered ( aside from the fetish business clips, sorry) as I was compiling my little list. This not a top 10 list by any means, they are given in no particular order really aside from the numerical value:

1. The Queen's Nose: Harmony's Return
Typifying the Girl Detectives In Trouble tropes that run in the back of my head,  this one has all the right elements of danger and excitement that fits that genre of literature. The escape is rather easy, but that was part of the charm in that you knew our girl was never really in trouble if she kept her wits about her.

2. Meet Me Tonight
Another fun cute scene where you know no one is in any real danger and there's a happy ending coming. The  proper British couple getting bound up look like they are having loads of fun, even as the butler binding them betrays them out of all their ill-gotten loot.

3. Romance On the Run
I truly enjoy the old black and white films and I'm a sucker for scenes where some people stumble upon a bound and gagged damsel in distress and afterward have 101 questions as they are setting her loose.

4. R L Stine's the Haunting Hour: Stage Fright
Oh my! So many struggling girlies in distress as they are picked off and captured one by a wicked witch who wants to tell the real story of Hansel and Gretel to her captive audience. The clever R L Stine twist ending tops it off.

5. Shutterbug
Lots of good Youtube short horror films to choose from, this one topped them all (IMHO). a girl bound and gagged in terrible danger, but it's all for art and nothing is as it seems.

6. From the Lab: Taylor Swift
 He made the country cutie a hot little lingerie clad cleave-gagged captive with seemingly no effort at all. Oh Mr. Stitch, where art thou ?

7. Wild Thing
Among my long-sought after grail scenes, this one tops the list. After I first saw a few pics of heroine Kathleen Quinlan massively rope bound to that chair, her mouth sealed under all that tape, I knew I had to track that movie down and make that scene mine.

8. Gold Rush: A Real Life Alaskan Adventure
Alyssa Milano in period costume getting chloroformed and nearly kidnapped by ruffians. Nuff said.

9. Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng Chiang
Tom Baker was the Doctor when I was first introduced to the show back when I was 13 ( and my favorite Doctor), Leela was my favorite companion of the Tom Baker era and this is my favorite multi-part story. Trifecta. Louise Jameson struggling bound and gagged in period clothes is just icing on the cake.

10.The Disappearance of Alice Creed
A gritty well-told story of kidnapping and betrayal, quite realistic in its depiction of the crime as well as some of the longest bondage scenes committed to a mainstream film. In the end, our damsel Alice not only escapes her abductors, and certain death by starvation, but the stifling grip of her controlling rich father as well.

Tomorrow: Tied up Tuesday !!

A Railroad Retrospective Part 1

"I'm afraid she's a bit tied up at the moment, but I have a feeling we'll be running into her shortly."
— Khallos from Time Splitters

The music is high tempo, the damsel is in distress, and the mustachioed villain is mugging to the camera. Yup, she's been chained to a railroad track, and the express is on its way. Used and, indeed, recycled in many silent movies, modern films, student films, Tv shows, cartoons, video games and comics to the point where it's almost parodied .

Cartoon Damsels- From Funny to Fabulous !!

This familiar scenario first appeared in the 1867 short story "Captain Tom's Fright", although a more rudimentary form of it was seen on stage in 1863 in the play The Engineer. However, it really entered the meme pool as a result of its inclusion in the 1867 play Under the Gaslight, by Augustin Daly. (Interestingly, in Gaslight the victim is a male, not a fair maiden) By 1868, it reportedly could be found in five different London plays all running at the same time, and remained a theatre staple for decades. From there it was but a short leap to silent films when the latter appeared on the scene, the first appearance on film seemingly being the 1913 movie, Barney Oldfield's Race for Life. In this short comedy movie, virtuous Mabel Normand refuses the advances of the villain and is chained to the railroad tracks for her troubles.


Barney Oldfield's Race For Life
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The earliest real-life incident I could find was from 1874, when on August 31 the New York Times reported that a Frenchman named Gardner had been robbed and tied to railroad tracks. He managed to loosen all the ropes but the one that secured his left foot, and the train cut off his leg below the knee. Though he survived to describe the attack, he soon died of his injuries.

There are other examples, including cases involving a kidnapped 13-year-old boy (1881), a 40-year-old mechanic (the article actually uses the word "dastardly" to describe the crime), a college freshman (part of a 1905 fraternity initiation; he died), a 10-year-old boy (1906), and a 19-year-old man (1907).

An even earlier version of the scene comes from an English play by Charles Bolton called The Engineer (1863). The special effects may have been rudimentary – the train was typically painted onto a wood flat, which was then mounted on rails – but audiences loved it, says Nicholas Daly in "Sensation Drama, the Railway, and Modernity," an essay republished in his 2004 book Literature, Technology, and Modernity.

Pertinent Pages from Captain Tom's Fright

The railroad scene was popularized in the U.S. by a play by Augustin Daly (no relation, apparently) called Under the Gaslight (1867). Daly claimed the scene as his own, quite literally. In 1868 he sued theatrical promoters who were trying to put on a play by Dion Boucicault called After Dark that included its own railroad scene. The defendants pointed to "Captain Tom's Fright" as evidence that Daly's story wasn't original, but the court gave this argument short shrift and enjoined production of their play. Daly sued a few more times and wound up before the Supreme Court in 1899; the Court affirmed an award of statutory damages for violations of Daly's copyright.


--To Be Continued Next Week !!--