There used to be a debate about which came first, the game or the movie. Further complicating the debate about which came first: Sweet Home's trailer is both an advertisement from the movie, and a sales pitch for the Famicom game. It includes scenes from both. However, it's since been proven that while both came out in 1989, the movie was released in January of that year, while the game came out in December.
This film and its video game equivalent were inspiration for the survival horror video game, Resident Evil (1996). Both games were developed by Capcom.
The movie ended up different from the original idea of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Jûzô Itami, main producer and actor in the movie, imposed his wife in the lead role, reshot several scenes and replaced some special effects for the TV version.
In the documentary Building the Inferno: Nobuo Nakagawa and the Making of 'Jigoku' (2006), Kiyoshi Kurosawa states that he tried to get Jigoku (1960) production designer Haruyasu Kurosawa to work on this film. Though Haruyasu Kurosawa was interested in the project he was busy working on television commercials and couldn't schedule the time for a movie.