British writer and documentarist who turned to a mixture of dark thrillers,
comedies and chiller films, and made dozens of second-features in the
1940s, 1950s and 1960s - by which time he was also working busily in
TV. He often supplied his own screenplays, although these are not usually
as strong as his direction, which at its best chills the spine. His
'B' features, however, were all too often at the very moderate level
of the British cinema of the time.
Trained in engineering, Sewell broke into the British film industry
with the coming of sound, as an assistant cameraman at Walton Studios.
He also worked as an art director and film editor in the early 1930s,
and had already had experience of direction by the time he joined Gaumont
British instructional in 1937, making several short documentaries
for them. He began to turn to features in the 1940s, most notably with
The Silver Fleet (1943),
a good war film with a typically fine performance from Ralph
Richardson as a Dutch submarine manufacturer in the clutches of
the Nazis. This was well written and tightly directed, as was Latin
Quarter (1946), which was hardly the musical its title might suggest,
but a pre-Hammer horror style movie about a demented sculptor who hides
his victims in his work; the theme was much revamped in the peak years
of the horror film, although few of the film's successors could manage
as blood-curdling a climax.
Most of Sewell's subsequent films are insignificant quickies, although
some of them do make one regret that Sewell did not continue to gain
major assignments. Johnny, You're Wanted (1956) is a film of great charm
about a runaway boy, while several of his early 1960s films - The
Man in the Back Seat (1960),
House of Mystery (1961) and Strongroom
(1962) among them are thrillers that exert a grip tighter than their
low budgets would seem to promise. Of the later films, Curse of the
Crimson Altar (1968) is a big disappointment considering that Boris
Karloff, Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele were all involved; but The
Blood Beast Terror (1968) does have its moments, particularly in frightening,
high-angle shots of a runaway coach at night-time. In life, Sewell has
for many years been a keen yachtsman and some of his films reflect this
interest, as well as his documentary training. In television, he worked
as assistant director on an episode of the trail-blazing series The
Avengers.
