Fay Wray getting her clothes pulled off by King Kong.
As rendered in the style of the Messers Hanna and Barbera. With the dragon’s voice provided by Daws Butler.
Rescue services courtesy of an adenoidal turtle or a blue dog.
Maybe Hanna Barbera is where all those Japanese hentai got into their, erm, advanced DiD imagery. After all, they got the big puppy dog eyes from Disney.
Authurian legends. Knights on horseback and women hanging out of tower.
So, basically, an image of Miss PIggy as Rapunzel being tied to the railroad tracks would be the ultimate in DiD imagery. Plus you could put an apple in her mouth as a gag.
No no no no!
You’ve gotta have Mighty Mouse flying in, singing that he spies a damsel in distress. (That particular operatic Mighty Mouse scene always comes to mind when I hear the words “damsel in distress.” It doesn’t help that that cartoon is burned into my memory because it’s one of the only two Mighty Mouse cartoons where he kisses the heroine at the end. Which, to the mind of a pre-pubescent boy, is always a scene worthy of making farting noises at, as the hero is betraying his macho code by getting all mushy.)
First thing I thought of was the action movie cliche of having a woman on the screen for the sole purpose of accumulating ragged nakedness, screaming, and slowing down the hero.
A damsel in distress does not strangle her captor with the very chain that binds her to him, then blow up his ship with a deck gun. Such behavior is restricted to bad ass chicks.
Bad-ass chicks play the role of DiD more than any other. Frex, one of the most productive TV series in history, in terms of DiD scenes, was Xena Warrior Princess, though granted it was Gabrielle who got tied up most often, Xena herself did have some memorable scenes, like the time she was put in a yoke about the size of a door. Emma Peel from the Avengers had her share of scenes.
There is no innate conflict between being a bad-ass chick and being a DiD. In fact, bad-ass chicks are most likely to get the DiD treatment, because they’re more dangerous than the other kind.
The guy at the top of the tower in Monty Python’s HG.
To me, bad-ass chicks can wind up in distress… but they’re rarely referred to as ‘damsels’ 
The word ‘damsel’ (or the phrase damsel in distress) always calls up the image of a particularly passive girly-girl. 
OK, we’ll have to give you that one. But don’t forget naughty Zoot and all her horny sisters locked away in a castle, knitting exciting underwear.
Well, you’re right. Damsel does have that connotation. But the phrase “bondage scenes” has another connotation that’s also inappropriate, since the scenes in question aren’t generally sexual in nature. So it’s a case of
wait for it …
wait for it …
damselled if you do and damselled if you don’t.
GROOOOAAN!! :smack:
Sorry I set you up for that one 
Yeah, but who’s this “Frex”? Somebody freckled, I presume?
Frex is geekspeak for “for example”
What??? This deep into the second page and nary a mention of Sweet Polly Purebread at the mercy of Simon Bar Sinister, singing for her Underdog???
Gloria (Deborah Shelton) in Body Double.
Did we all go to kindergatren together?
Nell was tied to both railroad tracks and logs at the sawmill. And Snidely? Lose the mustache.
That bit from Disney’s Hercules: “I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this. Have a nice day!”