…And because I am a child of the 80s (and also painfully lame), for me, “Thundercats” sprang to mind. For some reason, I very much associate this pose with that show (and a few others of the time). Seemed like every other episode featured a scene with Lion-O carrying an unconscious Cheetara in his arms, boobs up. Which bugged me even then.

http://www.impawards.com/1960/wasp_woman.html

(Sorry — easily distracted.)

Then again, seeing as how the imperiled women are so fair skinned, perhaps the monsters who are after them are supposed to symbolize an entirely terrestrial and non-robotic threat to “our women” that was becoming increasingly awkward to portray in a literal fashion.

And Tobor sure is a badass, and he has EVERY human emotion! (but a questionable anatomical ability to act on them, which means he’ll probably get really frustrated and end up going Cuisinart on his captive, which is the robot equivalent of “postal”)

But beyond just portraying women in danger, lots of science fiction involves aliens abducting us from our natural habitat, doing invasive and sometimes hideous experiments on us, mutating us, breeding us, enslaving us, or simply slaughtering us all (though there is always a woman-in-danger subplot). To me, that looks like some weird human mental quirk where we feel compelled to imagine ourselves being subjected to all the things we humans subject other life forms to. I’ve never seen the aliens do anything to us that we don’t do to ourselves or other species, so maybe it’s a kind of softcore S&M thing.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/entertainment/street/Popocat%C3%A9petl%20and%20Iztacc%C3%ADhuatl.jpg

Yet I definitely agree, the poster portrays the robot as the menace and the half-naked woman as the victim to be saved by a human. It seems the art director knew of and leveraged existing themes in sci-fi posters, despite the actual plot of the movie. I remember seeing the film as a child, and even though the robot is supposed to be funny and harmless, I was still a little scared of him.

It’s really interesting, because many of these posters are so very similar to the posters where a big powerful protector is rescuing an imperiled woman. The body positions are basically the same – woman inert, warrior fetching her to safety in this case.

“The Bodyguard” springs to mind.

http://images21.fotosik.pl/247/d6c96c45012a7fe1.jpg

Or depictions of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, which you may not recognize by name but have probably seen (although in this case the inert woman is dead):

*rolls eyes*