Vernon Sewell

Vernon Campbell Sewell (born July 4, 1903 in London , United Kingdom , † June 21, 2001 near Durban , South Africa ) was a British film director , screenwriter and film producer with decades of experience for the domestic B-film cinema , where he was mainly made a name for inexpensively produced crime novels, thrillers and horror stories.

Live and act

Vernon Sewell attended Marlborough Public School and joined film in 1929 as an assistant camera at Nettlefold Studios. In quick succession he became a simple cameraman , sound recording manager, film architect and film editor . He also acquired skills in creating special optical effects. This was Michael Powell attention to Sewell, of him with the short film The media gave in 1934 his first directing job. Three years later, Vernon Sewell was the production assistant on Powell's semi-documentary Hebridean fishing story, The Edge of the World . After further short films, Sewell, now almost 40 years old, was able to direct his first full-length feature film in the middle of the Second World War in 1942 for the production company Powells and Emeric Pressburgers The Archers , the anti-Nazi, patriotic war drama The Silver Fleet , starring Ralph Richardson .

Vernon Sewell's first post-war production, Latin Quarter , was a huge box-office success. His next work, the ghost story The Ghosts of Berkeley Square , had its creative merits, but was still not as well received by the public. Although regularly employed, Sewell was never able to assert himself as a director of A-films in the future; Vernon Sewell only worked as a second unit director in high-quality productions such as Robert Siodmak's classic pirate film The Red Corsair, which was made in Europe . A passionate sailor, Sewell used his own yacht in the first half of the 1950s for three of his ocean-going films Ghost Ship, The Floating Dutchman and Dangerous Voyage (1952-1954). In the 1950s and early 1960s he made a name for himself with some cheaply produced, dark little thrillers with a manageable duration (between just under an hour up to 80 minutes). Towards the end of his career, he shot a Vietnam War drama in 1967/68 with Hollywood star Joseph Cotten and two horror films with the British genre stars Peter Cushing , Boris Karloff , Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele . Sewell ended his career in 1971 with another cinematic horror story, the tomb robber story Burke and Hare .

In July 1994, the now retired film director gave an interview about his career as part of the BECTU History Project, which is kept at the British Film Institute. Vernon Sewell spent his old age in South Africa, where he died very old at the beginning of the new millennium.

Filmography

as a director, unless otherwise stated

• 1934: The Medium (short film, also screenplay)
• 1937: A Test for Love (short documentary)
• 1938: Breakers Ahead (short film)
• 1939: What Men Live By (short film, also screenplay)
• 1942: The Silver Fleet (also screenplay)
• 1945: Latin Quarter (also screenplay)
• 1947: The Ghosts of Berkeley Square
• 1948: bigamy ...? ( Uneasy Terms )
• 1949: The Jack of Diamonds (also actor and producer)
• 1951: The Dark Light (also screenplay)
• 1951: The Black Widow
• 1952: Ghost Ship (also production and screenplay)
• 1952: The Flying Dutchman (also screenplay)
• 1953: Counterspy
• 1954: Dangerous Voyage
• 1954: Radio Cab Murder (also screenplay)
• 1955: Where There's a Will
• 1956: Soho Incident
• 1956: Home and Away (also screenplay)
• 1957: Rogue's Yard (also actor and screenplay)
• 1958: Battle of the V-1 (also production)
• 1959: Wrong connection ( Wrong Number )
• 1960: Urge to Kill ( Edgar Wallace Mysteries )
• 1961: Death goes with ( The Man in the Back Seat )
• 1962: Strongroom
• 1963: A Matter of Choice
• 1964: Strictly for the Birds
• 1967: Some May Live
• 1968: The Blood Beast ( The Blood Beast Terror )
• 1968: The Witch of Count Dracula ( Curse of the Crimson Altar )
• 1971: Burke & Hare

Web links

• Vernon Sewell in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Biography on screenonline.org