Bonita is a fictional young belly dancer at the El Scorpio nightclub. In addition, she is secretly working for major heroin smuggler Mr. Ramirez. Portrayed by the late actress Nadja Regin, the character appeared in the pre-title sequence of the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger.

Biography

Bonita is a beautiful young female belly dancer who dances the tarantella (Spanish dance) at the El Scorpio nightclub in Mexico. However, she secretly works for Mr. Ramirez, a significant heroin smuggler who works nearby.

After James Bond plants explosives in Ramirez’s heroin lab, he visits Bonita at the club when she is dancing, much to the delight of the men around her. She wears a white and black top and bottom dress with a flowing ruffled skirt.

Most of the bar’s customers disappeared when the detonator Bond planted exploded, leaving Bonita to retire to her room. To finish some unfinished business, Bond follows Bonita and enters her dressing room when she is in the middle of a bath but exits the bathtub to greet him.

Bonita and Bond appear to know each other from a previous encounter, as the two embrace and prepare to make love. When she pulls away complaining that his gun is hurting her, Bonita then asks why he always has to wear it, and Bond replies by saying that he has a slight inferiority complex. He takes the gun off, leaving himself disarmed. Bonita then double-crosses Bond by setting him up to get hit on the head as she distracts him. But Bond sees the assassin, Capungo, in Bonita’s eye and quickly spins around, using her as a shield to block the blow.

A fight ensues between Capungo and Bond. This fight ends when Capungo falls into the bathtub filled with water. Bond hurls an electric heater into the water, killing him as he attempts to reach for Bond’s discarded Walther PPK in the holster.

Bonita survives, but Bond leaves her lying on the floor against the wall with a severe headache and exits with the phrase “Shocking, just shocking.” Bonita is never seen again in the films.

Behind the scenes

Nadja Regin, who played Bonita, was cast as Kerim Bey’s mistress in the previous James Bond film, From Russia with Love.