Or is that how it always goes?
On occasion in classic film, the beauty in distress is a humpy male, who is stripped of all his masculine power - not to mention his clothes.
In The Mask of Fu Manchu, an outlandishly delicious horror film from 1932, matinee idol Charles Starrett makes the mistake of tangling with the fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff) and his evil daughter (Myrna Loy), leading to his being stripped, whipped, restrained nearly naked on an operating table, and enduring a will-zapping injection.
Myrna oversees his stripping and whipping, making no attempt to hide her mounting sexual frenzy, as she orders her slaves to whip him faster, faster, faster! The hapless Charles dangles by his wrists, groaning and spinning helplessly, in one of the most outrageous sexually-charged S&M scenes I've ever seen in any film, much less an 80-year old classic! (Note the two hulking male slaves that do it all to him mercilessly. Be still my fluttering heart.)
Here's Charles Starrett with his clothes still on.
Here he is before, during, and after being stripped and whipped.
Following his whipping, Charles is strapped to an operating table, near-naked and writhing, as Boris prepares the dreaded serum. A ring of muscular slaves stands guard while Myrna looks on. Hold on tight as the injection is about to begin! (Key ingredient of the serum: venum from a gigantic snake. No phallic imagery there, of course.)
If ever there were an Adonis in distress, Charles Starrett is he.
