“Sexy Leatherface” is not your standard burlesque act, but for Katie Kadaver, a burlesque producer and performer, model, podcast host, B-movie actress, and one-time mud wrestler, it’s a perfect fit.
“He’s my favorite horror movie villain,” Kadaver says of the character made famous from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies. She created the act for Grindhouse Tease, a horror-themed burlesque troupe Kadaver started in 2018 (the group is currently on hiatus while she works on other projects). In the performance, Kadaver, dressed in a cannibal’s flesh mask and a butcher’s apron, chases a screaming petite blond around the venue in a whirlwind or fake blood and chainsaw revving. Leatherface begins to gyrate and take it off, replacing the mask with fake blood as facepaint.
Photo: Fire & Ice Photography
“I particularly like him cause he’s a big guy and I’m a bigger performer,” Kadaver explains. “There are moments where you can tell there’s a person inside of there. There’s that twinge of humanity, and I don’t know, it just endears me to him.”
Kadaver adds that she sees some social commentary in the performance, too, hitting on themes that “we all have to wear masks sometimes,” and “the idea that any sort of body is the right kind of body. I’m murdering this body and through that process I discover myself and unmask.”
“Some people get it,” Kadaver says, and admits, “some people just have a confused boner and say ‘I don’t know what I’m looking at.'”
Photo: Fire & Ice Photography
Kadaver’s mother was a Stephen King fan, so the family watched adaptations of his work as she grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, as well as shows like Tales From The Crypt and The X-Files. As she got older, her brother helped her discover the golden age of slasher movies: Michael Meyers, Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, the whole grisly gang.
“Freddy Krueger scared the shit out of me. That was the one. Jason was scary but Freddy was gross,” Kadaver says.
As an adult, she’s enjoyed revisiting and reinterpreting these films that haunted her youth. One place for her to explore that love of the genre is on The VHS Vault, a podcast she co-hosts with Owen Brand. “We pick obscure films from yesteryear, old forgotten movies that are so bad they’re good and talk about them,” Kadaver says. “There are also episodes where we talk about horror movies in general, favorite kills, or we play games like ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’ but with movies or villains.”
Photo: Dirt Candy Photography
Around 2017, Kadaver began volunteering to help at convention booths for Troma Entertainment, co-founded by Lloyd Kaufman, the director and producer of cult classics like The Toxic Avenger (1984), Class Of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), Tromeo And Juliet (1996), and dozens more. Kadaver would help run the booth and sometimes appear in short promo videos, “so Lloyd saw me in action a bit and how I was on my feet,” Kadaver says. Last year, Kaufman told her that he wanted to cast her in The Power Of Positive Murder, which is rumored to be the last feature he’ll direct. Kadaver filmed her scenes (she plays a hairdresser) in the summer of 2024 in New York. The film is currently in post-production.
Her contacts within “Tromaville” (more of a mindset than a real place) led to another role, traveling to Iowa this past summer to film a scene in Orgy Of The Dead 2, where she portrays an undead character that emerges from a crypt for a striptease and a ghoul orgy. She’s also shooting a scene next month where she plays a podcaster in a production titled Curse Of The Ghost-Writer—another entry in Kadaver’s growing Scream Queen resume.
Katie Kadaver’s Halloween Movie Marathon Recommendations
We asked Katie Kadaver for some of her favorite Halloween-themed movies, and she gave us this list of treats:
• Halloween (1978). “That’s a must,” Kadaver says, adding that director John Carpenter is one of her favorites. “But one of my favorites of the franchise is Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982). I think as a standalone film, it’s great.”
• Night Of The Demons (1988). “One of my favorites on the Halloween theme.”
• Trick Or Treat (1986). “An ’80s heavy metal slasher film. It has Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne in it for like all of 5 minutes, but it’s a good movie.”
• Trick ‘r Treat (2007). ” It’s newer, but also a good watch for Halloween.”
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