Not surprisingly, the first ‘New Trunk Line’ was expensive. It was a heady and thrilling fusion of old, imperial and new, democratic worlds. Publicity shots for the Tokaido Shinkansen depicted the mercurial trains fleeting through landscapes adorned by cherry blossom as well as snow-capped peaks. And, yet, these remarkable achievements and world-leading new designs were presented as part of Japan’s venerable and highly distinctive culture. Japan became intensely fashionable again, with musicians from Ella Fitzgerald to The Beatles soon on their way to Tokyo. Visitors to the 1964 Olympics discovered a re-energised country and a compelling culture, sporting radical new architecture, motorways, motorbikes, cinema, cameras and so much else alongside the spectacular and world-beating trains. Then the very same Emperor Hirohito who declared Shinkansen and the 1964 Olympics open had addressed the nation over the radio – it was the first time people had heard his voice – to announce, after the dropping of Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” Japan had stolen a march in railway technology that was part and parcel of its remarkable economic and cultural revival during the 20 years following its political and military collapse in 1945. Japan’s bullet trains – named after the distinctive streamlined nosecones of the first O-series Shinkansen – set the pace for France’s TGVs, Germany’s ICEs and Italy’s Pendolinos, although these were not to appear for many years. Shinkansen made every other main line railway seem old-fashioned when the first line opened on 1 October 1964, at the height of Beatlemania and when the fastest British trains could manage 100mph (160km/h) over short sections of upgraded Victorian lines. In 50 years, two trains have been derailed, one during an earthquake in 2004, another in a blizzard last year, yet the Shinkansen’s safety record has remained unimpaired. And since Hirohito waved that first train away from Tokyo in 1964, there have been no fatalities on the network. Not only are they very fast, frequent, spotlessly clean and on time to the second, but their carbon footprint is 16% that of cars making the same journeys according to the Japan Railway and Transport review. Japan’s renowned bullet trains have made domestic flying all but redundant between major cities. From last year, trains on the Tohuku Shinkansen, one of the six high-speed lines opened over the past fifty years, scythe through sections of Japan’s mountainous landscape at 320km/h (199mph). Today, the latest, snake-like, 16-car Shinkansen trains leave Tokyo for Osaka up to every three minutes, each offering comfortable seats for 1,323 passengers and cruising at 270km/h (168mph). The Tokaido Shinkansen (-New Trunk Line’) would become not just the world’s fastest and most advanced, but also its most intensely used main line railway. Sprinting along a brand new, dedicated high-speed passenger track, featuring the fewest possible curves and shooting through 67 miles (108km) of tunnel and over 3,000 bridges, this was no one-off exercise to publicise the international games. Hillside Cannibals anyone? Ugh.Nine days before he declared the 1964 Tokyo Olympics open, Emperor Hirohito presided over a ceremony that witnessed the first white-and-blue ‘bullet’ train streaking from the Japanese capital at 210km/h (130mph) past Mount Fuji and on to Osaka in record time. It looks cheap, cheesy as all hell, and, god help me, kinda fun, which is more than I can say about my experiences with the majority of their past knock-offs.
Judging by the film’s trailer that The Asylum has just uploaded to their website, not only do they have to contend with cursed snakes loose on the train, there’s even a snake big enough to swallow the train. A female passenger has fallen victim to a Mayan curse that causes tons of deadly snakes to slither out of her body and attack the passengers of what will soon become an out of control train.
I don’t think I have to tell you what upcoming big screen movie this one is piggybacking off of.įor those that missed my previous Snakes on a Train article, the plot has to do with a passenger train traveling from Mexico to Los Angeles. In this case, it’s The Asylum’s Snakes on a Train.
The law of averages says it’s bound to happen eventually. As much time as I’ve spent ragging on The Asylum for their straight-to-DVD knock-offs of big screen films that usually end up being plodding, inept, and not even trying to rip-off the movies they’re ripping off with any real imagination to the point of, well, sucking hard, I think we may finally be on the verge of The Asylum churning out a real winner.