Watch the Japanese horror film that inspired Resident Evil for free

polygon.com:

There would be no Resident Evil without Sweet Home, the 1989 Japanese horror movie directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, now better known for films like Cure, Pulse, and Creepy. Sweet Home had a huge influence on Capcom’s groundbreaking foray into survival horror, largely in part because the original Resident Evil began development as a remake of a video game based on Sweet Home.

Thanks to video preservation group Kineko Video, you can now watch Sweet Home in 4K and subtitled in English, for free, on YouTube. A version of Sweet Home, ripped from a VHS copy of the film, was previously available on YouTube, but only in 360p resolution. Kineko Video’s upload is taken from the LaserDisc version of Sweet Home and features newly translated subtitles.

Sweet Home is a supernatural horror movie — not a zombie flick — set in a haunted mansion deep in the woods. The film tells the story of a film crew that visits the abandoned home of artist Ichiro Mamiya, whose frescos remain inside the mansion. So too does the tortured spirit of his late wife, Lady Mamiya, who terrorizes and possesses members of the crew.

New upload! Vidya fans will like this one… We're excited to bring you Sweet Home, the 1989 horror cult classic famous for being the source of inspiration for Resident Evil. Stuck on LD/VHS, we've given it the Domesday treatment after months of hard work! https://t.co/EU1H4PxrlX pic.twitter.com/JXUlqySP8Y

Sweet Home is full of grisly practical effects; the victims of the Mamiya mansion are gruesomely burned, melted, and cleaved in half in bloody fashion. At one point, one of the women in the crew is chased by a man who’s nothing but an upper torso — a grim image that appears to have carried over to Resident Evil.

Capcom adapted Sweet Home as a horror role-playing game for Nintendo’s Famicom console, and both the game and movie 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 go on to