I confess it strikes me as a strange use of villain time and effort to capture pretty women only to force them into brute labor. Wouldn’t big muscled men be better for that sort of thing? (They have to be better for something…) But all the same, some villains do, or so the editors of Dime Mystery Magazine seemed to think in 1938. Here is their July issue:
(“The Werewolf of Wall Street” is a movie someone ought to be making today.) They were still at it in September:
Beneath the streets of the city, a stripped-down Angel of Death engages in boat-races against some Roman dude, both with teams of slave-girl rowers captured from the world above. Yikes!
Clearly, these villains are more interested in venting their sadistic urges on nubile targets than they are in efficiency.
Either that, or they genuinely wanted to provide early 21st-century commenters with abundant opportunities for snark.
If I could reanimate a skeleton to beat the stroke, I’d animate the oars to pull themselves . It’s probably a union thing.
Why force them to work to their death? The survivors make the strongest babies.