After Otto Preminger finished the 1965 psychological thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing – his creepy black & white rejoinder to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho – the notorious control freak was so concerned with filmgoers showing up late and missing essential plot development points that he enlisted the Zombies to help create a special promotional clip to warn people against being tardy.
So the Zombies, who were already contributing three songs to the film's soundtrack, came up with Come On Time – a crafty rewrite of Just Out Of Reach which namechecks the principle players and presses the importance of punctuality. Now largely forgotten, the Zombies' Come On Time promo clip (reportedly shot under Preminger's critical glare) is an early example of a celebrity tie-in now commonplace in the set-up of big budget Hollywood films.
Since Sony Pictures strangely left it off their 2005 release of the Bunny Lake Is Missing DVD and today happens to be the birthday of Zombies' frontman Colin Blunstone, here's Come On Time followed by Preminger's original trailer where you can see the Zombies performing Just Out Of Reach on a pub TV and hear Otto underscore his "iron rule" that no one will be admitted to the theatre after the movie has started.
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