COLOUR MY MOVIE MISS NIAH FROM MARS
Settings, dialogue, characterisation and special effects are of a low order; but even their modest unreality has its charm. There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect.
Monthly Film Bulletin Review (1954) of Devil Girl from Mars.
Perception 1
Colour my movie Miss Niah from Mars.
We offered tea. Bed for the night. A Scottish inn.
Yet earthling sex slaves were top of your list.
Men to breed women on the barren red planet.
Was that really my Devil Girl on DVD
indelibly bleached to a state of monochrome?
Colourise my celluloid dream.
Smear red your lips. Pink flesh your face.
Shine bright your emerald S & M gear,
cap, cowl, skirt and stiletto boots.
Let your Hoover shaped robot
be high tech silver out of control,
and your promiscuous ray gun
spurt a laser beam,
all feisty red
and cobalt blue.
Perception 2
B picture heather turns purple green.
Bewildered Scotsman evaporates on glen.
Whilst his smoking remains,
those rounded up NHS glasses,
reek of skin and mortal Technicolor.
Perception 3
Five years old.
My paint box was small.
Miss Niah commanded.
* Alan Price was born in Liverpool in 1949. Read English at Sussex University. He works in London as a library assistant. His film A Box of Swan (1990) was screened on BBC 2. From 2002-2007 three short films were made with Polish director Pawel Regdosz. Stories broadcast on Radio 3, then in his collection The Other Side of the Mirror (Citron Press 1998). Poems recently published in Poetry Monthly, Fickle Muses (USA) Finger Festival, Orbis and Decanto. Regular poetry readings given in North London. Presently working towards a collection of poetry.
