These films were made not for Hollywood studios but, mostly, for a feisty independent outfit called American International Pictures, and were aimed at the youthful patrons of drive-ins and other modest theatrical outlets: movies designed for viewers desperate to get out of the house and see a movie, any movie. The audience wasn’t fussy, and neither was Mr. Corman.

In a recent phone conversation Mr. Scorsese, who directed “Boxcar Bertha” for Mr. Corman’s New World Pictures in 1972, recalled his impressions of those films. “I first became aware of him in the late ’50s,” he said, “with B films that were on these double bills. He had a distinct visual style, he had something to say, he used recurring actors, and very often he seemed to have a great sense of humor about himself.”

Reflecting on the exceptionally goofy “Creature From the Haunted Sea,” Mr. Scorsese laughed as he imagined, plausibly, the circumstances of the production: “They want to do a horror film, they come up with a script, they don’t have the money to do it, they’ve run out of props and stuff, the monster looks terrible — so they say, why don’t we make it into a comedy?” He added, “And the kids respected that and responded to it. They knew he was hip in that way. If that’s the word.”

Not exactly. But the makeshift, let’s-put-on-a-show-right-here-in-the-barn spirit of early Corman movies still looks pretty winning, particularly in extra-cheap productions like “Creature” and “A Bucket of Blood” (1959). “Roger would put anybody to work, on anything,” Mr. Towne said. “Speed and efficiency and inventiveness were de rigueur on his sets.”

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