We are hiding behind a wall in a moonlit churchyard carpeted with dead leaves and twisted trees. Gavin out of Gavin & Stacey is lashed to a stone sarcophagus. “Action!” comes the shriek, and a fell wind whips up. A row of white-fanged, black-taloned, red-lipsticked women advances, kissing and caressing each other as the breeze flutters through their skimpy chiffon outfits.

“Cut! That’s great, let’s take a break,” yells Phil Claydon, the director of Lesbian Vampire Killers. The cast and crew head for the doors of the studio at Three Mills Island in East London. Claydon indicates a pair of bored-looking blonde extras. “Those two are sisters,” he says with a leering grin. “They didn’t really fancy getting off with each other, but I made them.”

It’s clear that Claydon’s film will not be a landmark in progressive cinema. Apparently born when its writers were challenged to think up the dumbest title they could and build a film around it, it stars the wildly overexposed James Corden and Mathew Horne as hikers stranded in a village where the women are cursed to become sapphic bloodsuckers on their 18th birthday. “Girls, gore, gags, James Corden, Mathew Horne, very funny” is how Claydon describes it.

The first five elements are correct, but the film is about as funny as Horne & Corden, the duo’s decidedly weak new TV sketch show. That programme’s lazy homophobia has received widespread critical condemnation in recent weeks, including a zero-star review in The Times that has gone on to incite hot-blooded media debate.

Meanwhile, to the apparent amusement of many of the cast and crew, Lesbian Vampire Killers has been accused by websites such as angrylesbians.biz of pandering to “stereotypical male fantasies” of lesbianism — one of the few stereotypes that still seem to be acceptable in mainstream culture. “That’s a good point,” says Horne, as he and Corden embark on a game of carpark football. “I would also argue that it caters to lesbian fantasies as well.”

Breaking off from the kickabout, a panting Corden has a more baffling take on the matter: “This film can’t cause offence to any lesbians, only lesbian vampires. It’s the equivalent of me being angered by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt’s portrayal of men in Interview with the Vampire. They’re not men, they’re vampires.”

For Claydon, whose vampires die amid geysers of dubious-looking white fluid, being offensive is surely part of the plan. He is just sorry that the protesters have confined their anger to the internet. “It’s a shame they haven’t been down here picketing,” he says. “If you’ve got something to say, come down and be vocal.”

But the protesters have already played their part, Corden says. “You almost feel like telling them, ‘You know what you’re doing, don’t you? You know that we can’t buy this sort of publicity?’ I’ve never worked on a film with this much interest.”

Or pressure. Although he has appeared in films such as The History Boys and Telstar, Corden has never played a lead on the big screen; Horne, with only a tiny appearance in Vanity Fair to his name, is even more of a movie rookie. Yesterday, Corden shot a scene in which he walked, in Reservoir Dogs-style slow motion, to a rendezvous with sapphic oblivion. “It was my first ever feeling of being a hero,” he smiles. “ I was thinking, ‘This is what it must feel like to be Bruce Willis’. ”

Not that the sensation lasted — Corden and Horne are basically playing less charming versions of their cackhanded mates in Gavin & Stacey. As Horne says, “Apart from the lesbians and the vampires and the killing, it’s a buddy movie.” Indeed, one of Claydon’s defences of his film is that “the women are ultra-powerful, beautiful, iconic and the guys are just bumbling idiots”.

Right on cue, a rhapsody in red stalks past. It’s Silvia Colloca, who plays Camilla, the queen vampire. Her scarlet hair has been inlaid with gold and shaped into two huge spikes. “If you think that’s good, look at this,” she purrs, sweeping off her wrap to reveal a series of curved spines protruding from her shoulders and all the way down her bare back. The look was inspired, says Claydon, by the queen from Aliens.

But even a vision of femininity as formidable as this can’t escape the ongoing male obsession with girl-on-girl action, as Colloca tells us about getting home after doing her first love scene with a woman. “ ‘I didn’t feel anything,’ I told my husband. ‘That’s promising,’ he replied. ‘You weren’t disgusted, so we can work on it!’ ”

The Aliens homage is just one of many in a film that contains nods to horror sources from The Evil Dead to The Lost Boys as well as heavy metal magazines. “There are lots of references, but the writers are so geeky that I probably couldn’t spot them,” Horne admits. He prefers “Withnail and I meets Buffy”, a rather fanciful comparison given that one of the biggest gags revolves around the resemblance of a sword pommel to a penis.

Well placed to assess Horne’s first claim is the former Withnail and I star Paul McGann, who plays the vicar who aids Corden and Horne in their battle against the vampires. Laconic and dapper in dog collar, moustache and trilby, he looks farther afield for influences. “We have our Hitchcock days, we have our Hammer days, we have our John Woo days . . . today’s a Woo day,” he says, grabbing a crossbow in one hand and a crucifix in the other and heading off for his showdown with a newly resurrected Camilla.

McGann’s scene will culminate in him disappearing under a sea of lesbian vampire bodies: it reminds him, he says, of “one of those dreams I have — usually wearing no trousers”. And what of the protests? “It is what it is,” he says, sidestepping deftly. “Post-modern is as post-modern does. It’s all deep and perfectly meaningless.”

Lesbian Vampire Killers is out on Mar 20

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