Would Resident Evil have ever seen the light of day without this bonkers Japanese horror
movie? Here's a look at the obscure Resident Evil precursor you've never even heard of.
Long before the first "Resident Evil" game was released in 1996, "Sweet Home" was laying the
groundwork for everything it would become. The movie and video game versions of "Sweet Home"
were both released in 1989, on the exact same day. The two versions were developed
alongside each other with some disagreement over which one started first. At any rate,
the film has a decidedly more video-gamey feel than the vast majority of movies at the time.
The "Sweet Home" video game was released on the Famicom console,
which is essentially the Japanese equivalent of the NES. Players take control of all
five of the film's main characters at different points — each with a unique
skill — as they make their way through the painter's mansion and try to escape.
The gameplay consists primarily of turn-based combat, puzzle solving,
and exploration. The game features a much wider range of enemy types than can be seen in the film,
including everything from suits of armor to skeletons. According to Bloody Disgusting,
the game was never released outside of Japan. Although the project was held
back by the technical limitations of the era, it was considered quite innovative
and helped push the envelope forward in the burgeoning horror game genre.
"We don't know what's going to happen."
The "Sweet Home" film and video game can be counted as a direct ancestor of the entire
"Resident Evil" franchise, which has eclipsed its originator in popularity and reach several
times over. In truth, calling "Sweet Home" the inspiration for "Resident Evil" might actually
be an understatement. As explained by Goomba Stomp in a retrospective on "Resident Evil,"
the project was first born as a direct remake of the "Sweet Home" game. Tokuro Fujiwara created
the original game on the limited tech of 1989, but after major advancements had been made on
video game hardware in the early '90s, Fujiwara wanted to create a 3D remake of "Sweet Home."
When Shinji Mikami was assigned to lead the remake, he began drifting further and further
away from the source material. He wound up pulling inspiration from the 1992 horror game
"Alone in the Dark" as well as the zombie films of George A. Romero, making the key enemies of
the game zombies. As development continued, it stopped being considered a remake and took on
the new title of "Biohazard" in some parts of the world and "Resident Evil" in others,
according to Kotaku. Even still, traces of the "Sweet Home" DNA can still be felt.
The biggest set-piece sequences in "Sweet Home" rely heavily on complex special effects. These
showstopper moments include a mangled torso crawling along the floor and leaving its legs
behind and a corpse in a wheelchair erupting into molten goo. There's also a man's face melting off
and a gigantic ghostly lightning-spewing monster of queen-alien proportions. The
execution of these key sequences represented make-or-break moments for the film. Fortunately,
the production was willing to seek out the world's best special effects talent.
American special effects artist Dick Smith had built up a sterling reputation after
working on world-class films like "The Godfather" and its sequel,
"Taxi Driver," "The Deer Hunter," "Marathon Man," and "Starman."
"Bingo."
He also most pertinently worked on gore showcases "The Exorcist" and "Scanners." Smith was riding
high off the success of an Oscar win for "Amadeus" when he was asked to fly to Japan to handle the
special effects for "Sweet Home." Smith accepted the offer and delivered some incredible results.
In the 1980s, CGI was still in its infancy, but things were beginning to change by the
end of the decade. James Cameron has long been at the cutting edge of VFX, and his film "The
Abyss" — released the same year as "Sweet Home" — pushed the form further than ever before.
"It's trying to communicate."
Computer generated visuals are used extremely sparingly and only really pop
up in a noticeable way in the ending sequence of "Sweet Home." After being reunited with her
dead child and transforming into an angelic figure, the ghost rises up into the sky,
seemingly ascending to heaven. A simple 3D environment rotates around the ghost
as it soars from underground, past the banisters of the mansion and climbs all the up into the sky,
which then cross-fades back to a live-action time-lapse shot of the sky.
One subtle touch that some viewers might miss is related to the many
murals within "Sweet Home." As they explore a deceased painter's abandoned mansion,
the documentary crew uncover a number of frescos painted on the home's walls.
These paintings are key to the goals of the documentary crew, but wind up being
largely inconsequential to the plot once the supernatural occurrences begin taking place.
The frescos are a bigger part of the "Sweet Home" video game, as there are far
more of them and they provide players with important clues. As unlikely as it sounds,
the frescos can also provide viewers of the movie with clues as well. The first
fresco uncovered by the crew in particular is loaded with foreshadowing. The various images
on the mural include a single eye, hair, fire, a baby with a small coffin, and a metal door.
Though seemingly innocuous upon first glance,
each one points to a key image that will pop up later in the film. For example,
the single eye foreshadows the backstory of the ghost who lost an eye trying to save her daughter,
and the small coffin is dug up outside the mansion later on and contains the ghost's dead daughter.
The plot of this Japanese ghost story bears an awful lot in common with a British one.
"Sweet Home" and "The Woman in Black" are both set primarily in abandoned mansions,
haunted by the ghosts of mothers whose children died in tragic accidents. Both
stories also climax with the protagonist digging up the corpse of the ghost's
dead child outside and returning it to its rightful place inside the mansion.
The novel "The Woman in Black," written by Susan Hill, was first published in
1983. In a striking coincidence, the first film adaptation of "The Woman in Black" was made as a
TV movie and aired on British television the same year "Sweet Home" was released.
It is possible that Kiyoshi Kurosawa pulled some inspiration from the novel
when writing the "Sweet Home" screenplay, but the similarities may also be a simple
case of parallel thinking and falling back on touchstones of the genre.
"None of this is funny."
The biggest factor behind the obscurity of "Sweet Home" today is the film having never received an
official release outside of its home country. It enjoyed a standard theatrical release in Japan but
wasn't distributed any further, just like its video-game counterpart. When it came time for
home media products, "Sweet Home" was released on VHS and Laserdisc, but again only in Japan.
All these years later, the film has still never made its way abroad in any official capacity. It
has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray or even made available to stream on any service,
though a VHS rip has appeared on YouTube. Anyone outside of Japan looking to view
the film through traditional means will likely have to resort to importing an old
physical copy of it. Rare VHS copies of the film typically go for between
$100 and $200 on eBay. Laserdisc copies of the film are even rarer, but do exist.
Since these dated formats are the only ways to watch the film in the modern age,
the resolution is quite poor. Fans of the movie would undoubtedly be happy
if a cleaned up, remastered edition of the film were released on Blu-ray,
but the rights are owned by Toho Pictures Inc., who have shown no interest in a re-release.
One of the most important characters in "Sweet Home" is Emi, the teenage
daughter of the documentary director. After the ghost begins picking off the crew one by one,
the priority becomes getting Emi out of the house alive. At a certain point,
she appears to be dead, but Akiko susses out that it is a test and
braves the hallucinated flames and the fury of the ghost to save her.
The role of Emi was played by Nobuko Yamada, who is better known by her stage name Nokko.
At the time the film was released, Nokko was at the height of her fame as lead singer of
the pop rock band Rebecca. The band broke up a couple of years after the release of "Sweet
Home," but Nokko went on to have a successful solo career. She gives a solid performance,
but "Sweet Home" is the only film in which Nokko ever appeared.
"Sweet Home" was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa in the early stage of his career. Kurosawa
would go on to find major international critical success later on in his career,
but was still finding his footing in the 1980s. In the beginning of his career,
Kurosawa worked his way up as a director of "pink films." These
were a type of popular Japanese movie that included elements of soft-core pornography.
These days, he works at a dramatically different level, and is a returning favorite of the
prestigious Cannes Film Festival after having been winning several awards over the years. His
later work is a world apart from "Sweet Home." He continued working frequently in the horror genre,
however his filmmaking style would become defined by subtlety, restraint,
and thought-provoking themes, none of which can be found in the over-the-top, bombastic "Sweet Home."
It should come as no surprise, then,
that Kurosawa disowned this early effort. Though Kurosawa wrote and directed the film,
ownership of "Sweet Home" in its final form is often attributed to producer Juzo Itami.
Kurosawa and Itami clashed behind the scenes, and Kurosawa was left unsatisfied by the end result.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Juzo Itami worked together a handful of times over the
years. Itami acted in "Bumpkin Soup," which Kurosawa wrote and directed,
and Kurosawa acted in "The Funeral," which Itami wrote and directed. After trading off
responsibilities on a couple of projects, they joined powers for "Sweet Home," but
they ended up butting heads behind the scenes and fighting for creative control.
Itami started out his career as an actor in the 1960s but pivoted to focus on writing,
directing, and producing in the '80s. He found success as a director with
acclaimed films like "The Funeral" and "Tampopo" and didn't look back.
"Gaze at it with affection."
As Midnight Eye puts it, he was,
"One of the few filmmakers to have consistent commercial success in Japan throughout the '80s."
He decided that his final acting role would be in "Sweet Home," with his past collaborator Kiyoshi
Kurosawa. He plays the now-cliché role of the old man who works at the gas station
and warns the documentary crew not to go in the haunted house, later on going in to save them.
The butting of heads between writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and actor/producer Juzo Itami
behind the scenes led to many changes in the end product. By all accounts, Itami wrested creative
control away from Kurosawa by the time the film was locked. As covered by Bloody Disgusting,
Itami disagreed with many of Kurosawa's creative decisions and took matters into
his own hands. After Kurosawa had finished the film, Itami went back and heavily altered it.
His changes included extensive re-editing, but he also went so far as to re-shoot
scenes without Kurosawa's input and others that weren't in Kurosawa's script. Per Midnight Eye,
Itami was one of the most bankable filmmakers of '80s Japan. The majority of his alterations
fell in line with making "Sweet Home" a more crowd-pleasing and commercially
viable movie, but came at the expense of Kurosawa's more artistic sensibilities.
These changes are a major part of why Kurosawa disowned the film. His original cut of the
movie was never released on home video, so Itami's version is the only one available
to watch today. There is really no telling how drastically different Kurosawa's version
might be. There is, however, a slim chance that his director's cut could
still see the light of day at some point. According to Midnight Eye,
a copy of the director's cut lives as a film print in Toho's studio vaults.
Will we ever see it? It's doubtful, but the next time you boot up a Resident Evil game,
remember that it may have never happened without the weird, obscure wonder that is "Sweet Home."