The Black Windmill is a 1974 British spy thriller film directed by Don Siegel and starring Michael Caine, John Vernon, Janet Suzman and Donald Pleasence.

In London a British intelligence officer, Major Tarrant, is engaged in an undercover operation to try to infiltrate a gang of arms smugglers – who are selling weapons to terrorists in Northern Ireland.

Harper agrees to take the phone call and begins to put a surveillance operation into motion – to discover the identity of Drabble.

The Drabble gang have placed incriminating evidence into Tarrant's flat, which appears to show a relationship with Celia Burrows, and this is found by Scotland Yard officers conducting a search.

Under duress he admits that he arranged the whole thing, having been passed over for a promotion and urgently needed large amounts of money to enjoy a comfortable retirement with his free-spending wife.

The film was made, in part, on location at Clayton Windmills, south of Burgess Hill, in West Sussex, England.

It also featured scenes filmed at Aldwych, Shepherd's Bush tube stations, and The Red Lion public house in the Duke of York Street.

A section of the film was also shot at Pegwell Bay, Ramsgate Hoverport,[4] where Tarrant makes his way across the channel and sneaks onto the back of a bus which is on board the hovercraft Sure.

A review in the New York Times gave the film a mixed reaction describing it as a "thoroughly professional job" but criticising its lack of invention and the failure of Caine's character to demonstrate any emotion about his son's kidnapping.

It concluded "in the age of Watergate, we need nimbler or more fantastic material to engage us — to grab our attention from wondering what may be on the news tonight".