Irma Bunt is the main henchman in the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. She is portrayed by German actress Ilse Steppat.

Ilse Steppat as Irma Bunt in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’.

Biography: Irma Bunt resides at the mountain-top clinic of Piz Gloria with Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Bunt is first introduced at a train station taking Bond up to the clinic by sleigh and helicopter while he is disguised as Sir Hilary Bray. She ostensibly looks after the girls who are suffering allergies – and secretly being brainwashed into ‘angels of death’ – and has dinner with them and ‘Sir Hilary’. She is a strict disciplinarian and Bond subtly insults her by telling her that her name comes from a nautical word for the baggy, swollen part of a sail.

When Bond escapes from Piz Gloria after his cover as Sir Hilary is blown, Bunt helps some of the men pursue him in the village at the bottom of the mountain with a Mercedes-Benz W111. She fails in this and is seemingly killed when she is caught in an explosion at a stock car rally. She is not seen again until right at the end of the film after 007’s wedding (a scene deleted from the film had Bunt trailing Bond and Tracy when they are purchasing a wedding ring from a jewellery store). Bunt shows up, alive and well, in a car driven by Blofeld. As they pass the newlywedded couple, Bunt leans out of the window and sprays bullets at Bond. Bond is unharmed, but Tracy dies.

Unusual for a Bond film villain, Bunt seems to have escaped punishment and retribution from 007: she does not appear in the following film, Diamonds Are Forever, where Bond avenges Tracy’s death by relentlessly tracking down and killing Blofeld. Other villains, such as Jaws, survive because they switched allegiances. This is probably because Steppat died shortly after the film was released. In the novel You Only Live Twice, Bond incapacitates her before the final showdown with Blofeld and it is assumed that she is subsequently killed in the destruction of the castle in which they are living. She is mentioned in the 1997 short story sequel Blast from the Past by Raymond Benson.

See also:

• Bond henchmen