I think I'd be ok living in Under the Gaslight (Augustin Daly, 1867). It contains what may be the original villain-ties-someone-to-the-train-tracks scene, except it's the heroine who does the rescuing, after hacking her way out of a locked storage shed with an axe. I wouldn't want to be Laura, the heroine, though, because kickass as she is, she still marries Ray, the utter twit of a nominal-hero. However, there's a street-urchin named Peachblossom who, now or later (I can't tell if she's supposed to be a child or a teenager from the script), will probably end up with Joe Snorky, the one-armed Civil War vet who is *way* cooler than Ray. So, yeah, it's the melodrama for me.