At some point in his career, John Carpenter lost the ability to give a single f*ck about anything. It’s his superpower, in that it frees him creatively to do — well, whatever he wants to do. That being said, sometimes Carpenter’s creative gambits can take a turn for the ludicrous, as with the director’s late-period sequel Escape from L.A.

Escape from L.A. was actually Carpenter’s third movie with star Kurt Russell: They met when Russell played Elvis in Carpenter’s underrated TV biopic of the rock ‘n’ roll king, then reunited for the ‘80s cult classic Escape from New York (1981). But his experience with the Halloween sequels — he famously hated Halloween II, and called it an “abomination” — made Carpenter skittish about doing another Escape movie. But Russell loved playing eyepatch-wearing badass Snake Plissken, and he and Debra Hill leaned on the director until he agreed to revisit Snake in a new movie. All three of them arecredited as screenwriters, while Russell and Hill produced the movie.

It was a real “why not” sort of situation. And that loose, improvisational vibe is evident in the final film, which famously features Snake Plissken surfing on a tsunami, playing a high-stakes game of basketball, and paragliding into a Disneyland avatar called “Happy Kingdom.” Carpenter’s hatred for the city’s shallowness and absurdity is palpable in the more satirical scenes, and the story pits a diverse band of outcasts against a hyper-capitalist totalitarian theocratic state. It sounds like a lot of fun — and it is. It’s one of Carpenter’s favorites from his filmography, and it can be yours as well with a new physical-media release tied to its 30th anniversary.