Empire Pictures was one of the premiere studios behind genre cinema in the 80's. They were primarily known for their horror films, and justifiably so.  But they also worked in sci-fi, action, and creature feature cinema, and of course, hybrids of all the aforementioned genres. The company was headed up by Charles Band after his Charles Band International Picture company failed to get its films into theaters. The company took off, and ended up becoming quite popular with horror and cult film aficionados at the time, and since.

    Empire Pictures head honcho Charles Band would fold the company in the late 80's and start the equally popular Full Moon features where he would have great success with his Puppet Master, Subspecies, and Evil Bong franchises. However, to commemorate his work with Empire Pictures Band has put together a special collectors box set called The Empire Pictures Collection

     The Empire Pictures Collection contains 17 films compromising a good deal of Empire's finest output. This set also includes the 3-D version of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn. 16 of the 17 films are Blu-ray releases, while Arena is DVD only, but inserted into a Blu-ray case so that it fits comfortably in the box set.  The Empire Pictures Collection is not made up of new releases. It includes releases from Shout/Scream Factory and Full Moon that have been released previously, so if you already own a majority of these titles you can safely skip the set unless you want the box, and collector's booklet. 

    Of course, if you don't own them that also allows you get a few interesting bonuses. The Shout/Scream editions of many Empire titles came in double feature sets, and 2 of them came on films that were not Empire films. So on the Blu-ray edition of Troll, you will get a copy of the non-Empire Troll 2 (a camp classic in it's own right), and with TerrorVision, you will get a copy of the Video Dead (not exactly a classic, but I'm a fan). The only Full Moon release in the package is Trancers, all 16 others are Shout and Scream Factory.

     Audio/Video quality is solid on the Shout/Scream Blu-ray's for the most part. Most of them look natural or at the very least not tampered with. From Beyond has some minor DNR, but it's not so overwhelming to cause issues, and many of the films have extras exclusive to the releases. However, as these are duplicated from their Scream/FM counterparts barebone releases like Ghost Town remain so. I have included a handful of EuroCultAV's prior Blu-ray reviews of titles included in this set below.

Trancers

Ghoulies 1/2

Ghost Town

From Beyond

Terrorvision

Troll

Robot Jox

Prison