Katzman's specialty was producing low-budget genre films, including serials, which had disproportionately high returns for the studios and his financial backers.

From 1935 to 1940 Victory produced two serials and 30 features, including Western film series starring Tom Tyler and Tim McCoy,[12] and action pictures with Herman Brix and Bela Lugosi.

Katzman also made crime films like Hot Off the Press (1935), Bars of Hate (1935), The Fighting Coward (1935) and Danger Ahead (1935), many of which were written by Peter B. Kyne.

[13] In January 1939 Victory announced they would make 20 more Westerns.,[14] but within six months Katzman closed Puritan and began releasing his productions through Monogram Pictures.

At Monogram, a "budget" studio, Katzman partnered with Jack Dietz, under the name Banner Productions, to produce 22 East Side Kids features, two musicals, and a series of thrillers with Bela Lugosi.

In January 1943 Katzman signed a contract with stage star Frank Fay and screen comic Billy Gilbert for four films.

Fay walked out on the series after the first film, Spotlight Scandals (1943), and Katzman replaced him with Gilbert's closest friend, Shemp Howard.

In September 1944 Katzman was offered a job producing serials for Columbia Pictures, starting with Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) and Who's Guilty?

In August 1946 he signed Jean Porter to star in Betty Co-Ed (1946), made by Katzman's Monogram director Arthur Dreifuss.

During this time Katzman continued to produce serials: Jack Armstrong (1947), The Vigilante (1947), The Sea Hound (1947) with Buster Crabbe, Brick Bradford (1948), Congo Bill (1948) and the outstandingly successful Superman (1948).

[22] Katzman's stock-in-trade was now a mix of Arabian Nights fantasies (which he called "tits and sand"), western, action, and prison pictures.

[20] Other action-oriented Katzman product around this time included the Jungle Jim adventures; the serials Tex Granger (1948), Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), Batman and Robin (1949), and Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies (1949); the action thriller The Mutineers (1949) with Hall; the swashbuckler Barbary Pirate (1949); and the crime movie Chinatown at Midnight (1949).

Katzman's main directors during his early years at Columbia were Arthur Dreifuss, Lew Landers, William Berke, and Spencer Gordon Bennet.

Berke specialized in the Jungle Jim films: Mark of the Gorilla (1950), Pygmy Island (1950), Captive Girl (1951) and Fury of the Congo (1951).

Bennet made the serials: Pirates of the High Seas (1950), Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), Cody of the Pony Express (1950), Mysterious Island (1951), Roar of the Iron Horse (1951) and Son of Geronimo (1952).

Landers handled the other action features like State Penitentiary (1950), Revenue Agent (1950) with Lyle Talbot, Last of the Buccaneers (1950) with Paul Henreid, Chain Gang (1950), Tyrant of the Sea (1950) with Ron Randell, Hurricane Island (1951) and When the Redskins Rode (1951) with Hall, A Yank in Korea (1951) with Lon McAllister.

Richard Quine, then under contract to Columbia, made one of his first films as director for Katzman, Purple Heart Diary (1951); he later did Siren of Bagdad (1953) with Paul Henreid.

Columbia's president Harry Cohn sometimes used the Sam Katzman unit as a threat, to keep recalcitrant actors in line or terminate an unwanted contract.

Cohn was forced to honor the agreement, and to his credit he allowed a higher production budget for The Magic Carpet (1951), which was filmed in Super Cinecolor.

[27] Director Spencer Bennet continued to make serials like Blackhawk (1952) and King of the Congo (1952), and branched into features such as Brave Warrior (1952) with Hall and a Jungle Jim film, Voodoo Tiger (1952).

[30] William Castle joined the Katzman group as director in 1953, starting with Serpent of the Nile (1953) with Rhonda Fleming and Raymond Burr.

"[31] Castle went on to make a series of films for Katzman including Slaves of Babylon (1953) with Richard Conte, Conquest of Cochise (1953) with John Hodiak, and two Westerns with Montgomery, Fort Ti (1953) and Masterson of Kansas (1954), The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954) with Scott Brady, and The Saracen Blade (1954) with Ricardo Montalbán.

[32][33] Castle directed Jesse James vs. the Daltons (1954) in 3-D, The Iron Glove (1954) with Robert Stack, Charge of the Lancers (1954) with Paulette Goddard, Drums of Tahiti (1954) with Dennis O'Keefe and The Battle of Rogue River (1954) with Montgomery.

[23] In August 1954 Katzman said he had 14 films lined up, with four more to come, and had assigned four writers to projects: Curt Siodmak to The Creature with the Atom Brain, Berne Giler on Dressed to Kill, Ray Buffum on a juvenile delinquency story, and Robert E. Kent on a Western.

[34] Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) led to a series of science fiction films, such as It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), with effects from Ray Harryhausen.

Katzman still made westerns such as The Gun That Won the West (1955), Seminole Uprising (1955), Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1955) and Duel on the Mississippi (1955), swashbucklers like Pirates of Tripoli (1955) and crime films such as New Orleans Uncensored (1955), Chicago Syndicate (1955), The Crooked Web (1955), The Houston Story (1956), Miami Exposé (1956) and Inside Detroit (1956).

Katzman also produced horror films for the teenage audience, including The Werewolf (1956), The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957), The Giant Claw (1957), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) and The Night the World Exploded (1957).

[23] “Every picture I make now has a selling gimmick aimed at the young audience," he said in 1957, and he made car movies, horror stories, science fiction and music.

[23] In 1957 Katzman made seven films for Columbia, including non-teenage fare such as Utah Blaine (1957), Escape from San Quentin (1957), The Tijuana Story (1957) and The World Was His Jury (1957).

He was the uncle of television producer Leonard Katzman, and, in turn, the great-great-uncle of Ethan Klein of the Israeli-American YouTube comedy channel h3h3Productions.