Mark Van Woert

Underground Film Critic and Cult Director Mark James Van Woert was born early 1971 in Owosso, Michigan. At the age of 19 Mark was bit by the acting bug when 20th Century Fox landed on his home town's door step of Alpena, Michigan. Where they filmed several scenes for Die Hard 2: Die Harder. He skip several days of his senior year during the frigid dead of winter just for a chance to be in the film. Then sometime later in 1998 the world got it's first taste of Mark with the inception and extreme popularity of his horror/sci-fi film news and gossip website entitled HorrorManiacs.com. During its four year run the site was noticed and given honors by such organizations as Paramount Pictures, Troma Entertainment, and Newline Cinema. It was one of the first independent run websites to be offered the opportunity by Hollywood production companies to promote their main stream horror films with licensed swag like movie posters, DVDs and VHS tapes. At the peak of its popularity, the site received a minimum of 8,500 unique visits daily, and employed four freelance writer/film reviewers. The website was up on the latest news, gossip and housed thousands of film reviews which help pave the way for Mark as a legitimate Film Critic... aka "The b-Critic. The website's popularity also gave Markus the opportunity to conducted numerous personal interviews with such stars as Debbie Rochon, Robert Z'Dar, and Bruce Campbell, and not to mention many popular Indie and mainstream film directors. In late 2000 Mark was hired by the then Cracked Magazine owner and publisher Dick Kulpa as Cracked's official webmaster. From there Mark moved up the corporate ladder to Promotions Editor, then to Contributing Editor, while during the same time moonlighting as a contributing writer. In early 2005 Cracked Magazine was sold and the old regime retired. Mark also teamed with Kulpa on many other popular projects. Like being a freelance writer (under an alias) and a contributing webmaster for the ever popular tabloid - Weekly World News. Which during the same time Kulpa held the reigns as senior editor and creative consultant. Later Mark went on to design, host and maintain several other popular websites that include official movie sites like "Nowhere Man", "The Fullmoon Fan Club" and "Death Defying Acts". Plus a few official celebrity websites like DebbieRochon.com, for actress Felissa Rose, actor Robert Z'Dar, later Byron Cherry; Coy Duke of The Dukes of Hazzard TV series, and Don Pedro Colley, also from the Dukes. From 2002 to 2014 Mark owned and operated the national talent agency called The Talent Bin - which represented several celebrities like Sonny Shroyer, the Dukes duo Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer, who sadly passed away July 23, 2011. Along with Don Pedro Colley, also best known for his role in the The Dukes of Hazzard tv series. Mark had a short stint working as Robert Z'Dar's agent (Maniac Cop, Tango and Cash.) Robert passed away March 30, 2015. Don Pedro passed away October 11, 2017. More recently Mark has appeared as an extra in a few box office hits like - Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, Real Steal, RoboCop (2014) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.