When Plan 10 from Outer Space opened on Jan. 19, 1995, the initial showing at the Sundance Film Festival was so overcrowded that cast and crew members were sliding family members in through side entrances, as tickets were no longer available and Park City's Egyptian Theatre had filled beyond capacity. That situation was soon the rule as well at the Tower Theatre, the erstwhile 9th & 9th movie house selling out showing after showing. Things went so smashingly that the arthouse film was, briefly, the single highest-grossing film in the U.S., based on per-screen average.

True, it was a single theatre showing the movie, but even so...

"When we showed it in Salt Lake City, it broke records," says Trent Harris, the film's writer and director. "It was the number one film in America. Honestly. This was printed in Variety magazine. We sold more than 10,000 tickets in Salt Lake City alone. People were lined up around the block, literally."

The success was a major win for Harris, who shot the low-budget feature guerrilla-style. It was filmed in and around familiar Salt Lake City locations of that moment—such as the Blue Mouse cinema and the underground club Playskool—as well as cast members' homes and offices, plus the streets, alleys and hills around SLC. The film's look was augmented perfectly by the set design of the production's David Brothers, a longtime SLC creative known as a large-scale visual artist, as well as a film-and-video producer in his own right. Seldom has heavy-grade cardboard been so deftly used to create an entire film's aesthetic.

It's a film that would definitely appeal to a B-movie fan with some knowledge of Mormon traditions, though the work can be appreciated by those without that background, too, as Harris takes an aim at the church's myths and mythos, while also tweaking the cultural mores of the city in which it was shot. It's steeped in smarts, but the humor's also wed to the absurd, with physical comedy the rule, à la its fanciful dream sequences and low-brow invasion footage.

Surprisingly, for a film with a rich vein of satire centering on the teachings and lore of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official response was muted at best. Little-to-zero blowback came Harris' way, as he recalls the initial reception.

"The critic from the Chicago Tribune liked the movie," Harris says. "She saw it at Sundance. She called the church for comment. The church said, 'That doesn't sound like something a member would make.'"

The plot—as quickly sketched out on Harris' website, echocave.net—notes that principal lead character Lucinda Hall "discovers a century-old book penned by a mad Mormon prophet. She deciphers this odd artifact and is sucked into a world where spacemen, polygamists and angels run amuck. Is she nuts or has she uncovered a diabolical plot to change the world led by Nehor (Karen Black), a peeved alien from the planet Kolob?"

Harris notes that he did grow up in Idaho alongside LDS members, wed to "that world and that society," a fact that informs the film. But he wanted to make something bigger, a film that could be understood by those who had not grown up alongside the faith.

"Everybody said that nobody's going to understand this movie if they're not Mormon," he recalls. "There are jokes that will have a special meaning if you have a Mormon background, but the film won the Raindance Film Festival in London. It won the Grand Prize there, and those people don't have any background in Mormonism. So you didn't need that to have fun with the movie. And the Mormons had fun with the movie, too. It's not mean-spirited towards Mormonism; it's quite the opposite, I think."

When it's suggested to Harris—also the creator of the cult classic Rubin & Ed (1991), among many other works—that he may not have thought the film would be playing in theatres 30 years later, he's quite quick to counter the idea.

"When I made this movie, I thought that it would be around for a long, long time," he says. "Because there's nothing else like it. Oddly enough, I sensed that it would have a historical presence. I betcha this movie lasts for 100 years. I'm not exaggerating. They'll be dragging this out in a hundred years saying, 'Look at this damned thing.' I'm really pleased with it. It works on all sorts of levels. And considering that there was no budget, at all, I thought it was an extraordinarily well-done piece, because of the people I roped into working on it."

Plan 10 from Outer Space has shown in Salt Lake City at multiple revivals over the years and there will be a pair of 30th anniversary showings slated for Broadway Centre Cinemas (111 E. 300 South) on Friday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Videos of the film can also be purchased at echocave.net.