EDITOR’S NOTE: Alien was on USA Up All Night on November 17, 1995 and December 28, 1996.

What else can I say about Alien that so many others have already said?

Directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O’Bannon, based on a story by O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, Alien influenced just as many movies as Star Wars.

The designs of H. R. Giger, Ron Cobb and Chris Foss took what Lucas started — the future didn’t have to be clean and in working order — and took it further, while the story shared that space wouldn’t be like a comic book or movie serial. It’d be just more hard work for a gigantic corporation, and death would not be dignified.

It also has one of the best taglines ever: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

For all that Alien influenced, the DNA of this movie comes from many places:

Queen of Blood: Astronauts respond to a distress call and take an alien on board that slowly kills them off, one by one. Its director, Curtis Harrington, said, “Ridley’s film is like a greatly enhanced, expensive and elaborate version of Queen of Blood.”

Planet of the Vampires: Mario Bava’s movie features a crash landing, where the disembodied inhabitants of an alien planet possess the crew of a rescue ship and take over their bodies. There’s a scene where the crew examines an alien ship and discovers the gigantic remains of the long-dead inhabitants of this planet, which is 100% stolen by Alien, regardless of what Dan O’Bannon and Ridley Scott said otherwise.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space: This 1958 black and white horror film — about the sole survivor of a crashed ship being rescued and slowly killing the crew of another vessel — is incredibly close to the ideas in Alien.

But no matter. This remix succeeds and has the crew of the Nostromo — Captain Dallas (Tom Skeritt), executive officer Kane (John Hurt), warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright, who was also in The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers), science officer Ash (Ian Holm), and engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), along with the ship cat Jonesy — have answered a distress call and end up bringing back an alien attached to Kane’s face.

The scene that results, where an alien bursts from Kane’s chest, shocked audiences and is still perfect today. That’s all you need to know: these aliens are perfect killing machines that can’t be reasoned with; they live to kill. This is a haunted house in space, in some ways, but also a chase.

I love that this movie led to a toy that no parent wanted their children to have, as well as a series of films that, well, are one good and the rest bad. But you know, I show up for all of them, because the memory of what this movie is gets me every time. This is the ultimate movie monster in one of the greatest horror films ever made. It’s just that simple.

Note: Thanks to Andrew Chamen for pointing out a typo I made!