PARK CITY — There have always been peripheral "dances" around the Sundance Film Festival that piggybacked on the world-famous independent Utah festival.

Most are gone and forgotten, but Slamdance has both thrived and carved out its own niche on the Park City mountainside.

Late Friday night, the opening-day premiere of the even-more-independent-than-Sundance festival kicked off with "I Sell the Dead," a period-buddy-comedy-horror hybrid about bumbling grave robbers. Using a horror film to pave the way to a cinema career is a road well-traveled, but getting Dominic Monaghan ("The Lord of the Rings," "Lost") and Ron Perlman ("Hellboy") to star in your first film is a bit off the beaten path. "I am attracted to good scripts," Monaghan said. "It is a fun caper, and it tickled me."

That suits the Slamdance festival just fine since it was started "as a way to antagonize the efforts of Sundance," according to co-founder and president Peter Baxter. He and his friends didn't get films into the Sundance festival while it was taking films that were already attached to studios. The beginning filmmakers felt their films deserved to be showcased as well, and so Slamdance was born as a sort of counter to the big bully on the block and its stars and its worldwide following.

"Where would we all be without Sundance?" he asked. "If it wasn't Slamdance, it was going to be someone else." Sundance had grown too big and too important not to leave room for talent that lacked the resources or contacts to get into the festival.

Often described in the media as "the competition," Baxter doesn't quite see it that way — anymore.

"Today they really compliment one another, each has its role. Ours is very much supporting emerging talent — we have quite a track record."

That point certainly can't be argued. Last year's box-office warrior "The Dark Knight" is the product of director Christopher Nolan, who launched from Slamdance with 1998's "Following." Steven Soderbergh, who competed against himself for the "Best Picture" Oscar category in 2000 with "Erin Brockovich" and eventual winner "Traffic," also premiered his first effort "Schizopolis," at Slamdance in 1997.

The list of success is much longer and includes Salt Lake's own Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") and Marc Foster ("Quantum of Solace"). The Slamdance mission now includes screenwriting, and it has turned out its share of successes as well.

"If you look at Sundance now, there is an expectation of finding distribution. It features mature filmmakers; often movies come with a promotional campaign behind them."