Pamela Duncan, who died on November 11 at age 73, will be remembered by B movie fans for her star turns in two early Roger Corman epics, “The Undead” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters.”

Playing a re-incarnated prostitute undergoing hypnotic regression in “The Undead” (1956), Duncan’s role unfolded against a background of superstitious villagers, dwarves, magic spells, demons, and an imp, played by Billy Barty. Mr. Corman “shot the crusades on a 60-foot sound stage, with horses and the knights with their maces and the rest of the weaponry,” Duncan told Marty Baumann, the author of “The Astounding B Monster,” a book of cinema interviews.

She returned in “Attack of the Crab Monsters” (1957), playing a young biologist in love with Richard Garland; he later found fame in a similar role as the professor on “Gilligan’s Island.” She spent most of the film marooned on a sinking atoll, fleeing atomically mutated giant crabs who wanted to eat her brain. During filming, she refused Mr. Corman’s request that she shoot a scene while swimming in a shark tank. Film connoisseurs view “Attack of the Crab Monsters” as one of Mr. Corman’s most successful early efforts.

Duncan was a native of Brooklyn and won several beauty pageants as a teenager. She told Mr. Baumann that she would bring high heels on the subway and then cut school to audition for shows. She had roles in several off-Broadway productions, and was successful enough to become the subject of romantic gossip in Walter Winchell’s column when she was just 19.

A brief early marriage to a serviceman led her to Los Angeles, where she soon found small roles in Hollywood films, starting with “Lawless Cowboys” (1951), in which she played the love interest of Whip Wilson. She also appeared on early television shows, including “Captain Video” and “The Roy Rogers Show.” She also made guest appearances on “Maverick,” “Bat Masterson,” and “Dr. Kildare.”

After the Corman films, Duncan returned to smaller roles in bigger films, but just as her career seemed on the verge of taking off, disaster struck: Her home was all but demolished by a mudslide. Resulting lawsuits caused her to drop out of the film business. She returned to New York, where she worked in commercials and occasion ally in off-Broadway productions.

Virtually forgotten by cineastes for decades, she suddenly began receiving fan mail again in recent years after appearing in “Curtain Call” (2000), a documentary about the Actors’ Fund Home in Englewood, N.J., where she had retired.

“How wonderful to have made a living in something that I enjoyed so much,” she said in the documentary. She never remarried, and leaves no known survivors, a representative of the Actors’ Fund Home said.