“I don’t like the look of this Trudy - not one bit!”

Of course, it’s basic filmmaking to start a movie by having someone just start expositing about the history of something we know nothing about. “Tell, don’t show” is the way we do things around here. And remember that, because the “don’t show” bit will definitely be returned to numerous time during this budget-deficient work of “art”.

So step forward “a vicar” (Philip Friend). Yes, despite this character’s lengthy time on-screen banging on about some old pirate who brought back a strange pet to Britain because of our latent xenophobia (or something), this character isn’t even gifted a name. Just “vicar”.

Vicar is talking to Brian Stroud (Broderick Crawford), the descendant of a cursed family, whose ancestor, Francis Real, was buried alive for being in league with the devil.

"It's all very interesting,” replies Stroud. “But I fail to see where it ties in with this desecrated grave.”

Hmm, really?

Cut to a woman who claims to have seen “an enormous black bird like a vulture, with a human head”, repeats what she just said, and then adds: "Then it flew right over me!”

Well, there’s only one person who can deal with all this seemingly stream-of-consciousness plot exposition, and that’s Inspector Brown of Scotland Yard (Gordon Tanner). Or at least, you’d think so.

The police inspector meets with Stroud (an American), and seems to gain an American accent through osmosis. We’re introduced to Stroud’s niece, Trudy Lutens (Diane Clare) who has come over to visit from the US but is clearly British. Confused? You will be.

In case you’re wondering, not much has actually happened yet. Bar a lot of yacking about things we haven’t seen. Interspersed with random shots of hospitals, car parks, trains etc that you’d assume had been filmed with the aim of having said yacking overlayed over them, but are instead just played out and then the yacking starts again. Almost as if the film makers needed to pad out the running time, somehow…

But onwards, eh? This film about some kind of feathered fiend isn’t going to watch itself. Enter Trudy’s husband, Dr Eric Lutens (Robert Hutton). It appears he’s the chap to sort all this out, and he’s going to use all his skill as “the world’s top nuclear scientist” to do it. You’d assume he has bigger fish to fry, but anyway.

Some children find a gory sheep’s leg on the beach, and Eric, putting two and two together somehow, makes the deductive leap that the leg must have fallen from a cave up a nearby cliff. And not, of course, been swept in on the tide, or dragged there by a dog or anything. Because that would be too far-fetched. They don’t just hand out those “top nuclear scientist in the world” titles to any idiot, you know.

Now very much on the case, Eric returns to the mansion and asks the very pertinent: “Did you happen to have a sheep stolen during the night?”, but instead of a straight answer we just get yet more lengthy exposition. The mythology of Easter Island is brought into the mix. People keep digging out an old parchment, looking at it, and putting it away again. Eric asks “if there’s an ornithologist near here?” (Every village has one).

And just in case we haven’t yet lost the will to live (perhaps the sheep hacked its own leg off in an attempt to stay awake), they go BACK to the woman in the hospital and she repeats her story again, this time adding a few titbits she was clearly holding back until the top nuclear scientist in the world arrived. Apparently, this enormous bird-thing she saw had human hands (gasp: “Oh no…”) and that it could have (COULD have?) been holding a casket.

Eric deduces: “It's either her imagination or the results of a scientific experiment!” I take back my initial cynicism, the guy is a genius.

More people are introduced - Melcher, a spooky Sexton (Edward Caddick) and Professor Hans Koniglich (Akim Tamiroff), Stroud’s friend and neighbour, and clearly the person at the centre of all this nonsense.

Eric continues to put two and two together and make ever increasing numbers, telling Koniglich: “I can assure you, I know what I'm talking about. I’m on the experimental staff of the atomic energy commission!”

He has deduced from a found feather that all this (whatever “this” is) is very much a case of “nuclear transmutation” (someone take that “top nuclear scientist” title off him quickly), and we’re introduced to some gold coins which are yet more evidence of something, for some reason. Whatever the fuck is going on is now “a disastrous scientific fact”.

Uncle Brian is carried off by an unseen foe, and Eric and Trudy decide to clear off to Windsor, where last-minute tickets to the ballet and rental Ford Mustangs are in plentiful supply. Back in the village the not-clearly-the-perpetrator Professor is continuing to bang on about the gold coins, the police have arrested “an itinerant” for the disappearances (three cheers for some accuracy, at least), and another member of the cast is murdered “in the same way” but off-camera and immediately reported in today’s newspaper (as often happens).

And lo, Trudy is lured into danger and Eric has to sort it out. Which takes bloody ages, as per, and involves YET MORE gassing on by those involved.

If you take nothing else from The Vulture (and to be honest, there’s not much to get), you have to at least admire the misguided enthusiasm of the makers who considered that a film about a killer half-man half-bird could be realistically presented on-screen with a tiny budget. Unfortunately, they failed to realise this vision and instead what you get is an angry bloke in a feathered suit, and a couple of remarkably terrible scenes where people have papier-mâché talons descend on them from the top of the screen while they attempt a scared face.

Or to put it another way, the production team were really winging it.