There would be none Residential evil without Sweet homethe 1989 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, now better known for films like Healing, PulseAnd Scary. Sweet home had a huge influence on Capcom’s groundbreaking foray into survival horror, largely in part because of the original Residential evil began development as a remake of a video game based on Sweet home.
Thanks to the video preservation group Kineko videoyou can watch now Sweet home in 4K and subtitled in English for free on YouTube. A version of Sweet homeripped from a VHS copy of the film, was previously available on YouTube, but only in 360p resolution. The Kineko Video upload is from the LaserDisc version of Sweet home and features newly translated subtitles.
Sweet home is a supernatural horror film – not a zombie film – set in a haunted house deep in the woods. The film tells the story of a film crew who visits the abandoned house of artist Ichiro Mamiya, whose frescoes are located in the mansion. This includes the haunted spirit of his deceased wife, Lady Mamiya, who terrorizes and possesses members of the crew.
New upload! Vidya fans will love this one… We’re excited to bring you Sweet Home, the 1989 horror cult classic known for inspiring Resident Evil. We’re stuck with LD/VHS and after months of hard work, we’ve given it the Domesday treatment! pic.twitter.com/JXUlqySP8Y
— Kineko Video (@kinekovideo) February 28, 2024
Sweet home is full of creepy practical effects; The victims of the Mamiya mansion are gruesomely burned, melted, and bloodily split in half. At one point, one of the women in the crew is chased by a man who is nothing but an upper body – a grim image that seems to have been carried over to Residential evil.
Capcom has adapted Sweet home as a horror role-playing game for Nintendo’s Famicom console, and both the game and film launched the same year. The Sweet home video game is full of jump scares and gory monsters, as well as a limited inventory system that would continue to inspire Residential evil.
Residential evil said game director Shinji Mikami GameSpot in a 2016 interview about the origins of his survival horror game, and how Sweet home influenced it.
“The meeting that got the ball rolling Residential evil was in 1993,” Mikami said. “We were at Capcom’s development studio in Osaka and my current boss, Tokuro Fujiwara, called me to talk to him. He said he wanted us to make a horror game using systems from Sweet home, a horror game for the Famicom that he had directed. I was actually a big fan of it Sweet homeand he was someone I really respected, so I was excited about the project from the start.”
The Sweet home video game, like Residential evil, features puzzle-solving and item-management gameplay, as well as survival mechanics. Players can take on the role of any member of the film crew as they explore the mansion and encounter random monsters against zombies, ghosts, and boil-covered abominations. The 8-bit game’s story is told through cutscenes and environmental notes, similar to Residential evil‘s narrative presentation.
If you want to play Sweet home, which was never released or officially localized outside Japan, you’ll have to turn to emulators and fan translation patches. Fortunately, there’s less of a barrier to enjoying the original film, which is delightful and schlocky in the most endearing of ways, but is limited to release on physical analog formats like VHS and LaserDisc.
There’s another good reason to watch Sweet home if you’re a video game fan with a penchant for trivia. The film’s soundtrack was composed by Masaya Matsuura of the band Psy-S, although he is now probably better known as a co-creator of PlayStation games PaRappa the Rapper And Vib ribbon.