Was Sweet Home a Movie or a Game First?
The movie, by eleven months. But they were built side by side, as one project.
The film came first: Toho released Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Sweet Home on January 21, 1989, and Capcom's Famicom game followed on December 15, 1989. On paper it looks like an adaptation. In the production record, it is something rarer, a twin work, planned together, staffed by the same two men at the top, and cross-promoted in each other's packaging.
Juzo Itami produced both. Kurosawa directed the film and supervised the game. The game's director walked the film's set for reference. Neither work is the original and the other the copy; they are two tellings released eleven months apart.
THE DATES
Film first, by eleven monthsJanuary 21, 1989 · the film
Toho releases Sweet Home in Japanese cinemas: directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, produced by Juzo Itami's Itami Productions, running 101 minutes, with music by Masaya Matsuura and a cast led by Shingo Yamashiro and Nobuko Miyamoto.
December 15, 1989 · the game
Capcom releases Sweet Home for the Famicom, directed by Tokuro Fujiwara, produced by Itami, supervised by Kurosawa. The film had nearly a year to become a known quantity before the cartridge arrived.
ONE PRODUCTION, TWO WORKS
How they were made togetherThe director supervised the game
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the film's writer-director, served as supervisor on the game. He told Fujiwara not to concern himself with following the movie exactly, and the game's plot expanded on the film in ways that were unprecedented for a tie-in at the time.
The game director walked the set
Tokuro Fujiwara toured the film's studio set to gather ideas for building the mansion. A few items he wanted were still cut for clashing with the film's atmosphere.
Dick Smith did the film's faces
The film's special makeup effects were by Dick Smith, the American master of The Exorcist and Amadeus, an extraordinary credit for a Japanese studio horror film, and part of why its gore still startles.
The game rode the film's tapes
Capcom promoted the game with a trailer carried on the film's VHS and LaserDisc releases, closing the loop: the movie sold the game to the same audience, in the same box.
WHERE THEY PART
Same house, different fatesThe plot
Both tell of a five-person crew entering the abandoned Mamiya mansion to document the lost frescoes of Ichiro Mamiya, and of the ghost of his wife, whose two-year-old son died in the house's incinerator thirty years before.
The deaths
The film kills Taguchi and Asuka and lets three escape. The game hands the death list to the player: all five can survive, or the count can fall further than the film ever dared.
The verdict of 1989
Reviewers generally judged the game the better work. One Famicom Hisshoubon reviewer praised Capcom's scenario while dismissing the film itself as a dud, and the game, not the film, is the one history kept.