³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Thirty years on from its UK cinema release, Quentin Tarantino's second film is viewed as a classic, but all these years on, has he finally managed to shed the label of being called a one-trick-'bloody'-pony?

Released on 21 October 1994, Tarantino’s multi-faceted anthology of gripping stories, iconic characters and memorable dialogue cast a spell over the wider popular culture at the time.

In contrast to the slick blockbusters that dominated the 1980s, this was a fresh new kind of moviemaking.

Pulp Fiction became the first independent film to gross more than $100m at the US box office.

Tarantino had already ruffled some feathers with the 1992 release of his first film, Reservoir Dogs.

By the time of the follow-up he was a household name, with any violent or stylish movie being described as Tarantinoesque.

It is worth noting that when Pulp Fiction came out in the UK in October 1994, the British Board of Film Classification had not yet given Reservoir Dogs a certificate for the film’s home video release, due to the press hysteria over some of the bloody parts of the film.

This outcome would perhaps have been Tarantino’s preference anyway, as a cinephile and firm believer of the mantra, ‘ONLY IN THEATRES’.

With Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino showed his knack for extraordinary characters talking about average everyday things, such as tipping etiquette or Madonna songs.

This technique was expanded in Pulp Fiction, which was an anthology of characters and stories interwoven through space and time.

This time, he pushed up the contrast a little higher, moving from black, white and red to a full-blown cinemascope multicoloured universe that at times felt almost cartoonish.

However, it was a universe always dominated by memorable dialogue and one-liners.

The stacked cast included Reservoir Dogs veteran Harvey Keitel, who had played a big role in getting that film made in the first place.

Uma Thurman and Samuel L Jackson took leading roles and would go on to become Hollywood A-listers.

But the most interesting and monumental piece of casting was John Travolta as the hitman Vincent Vega.

Travolta had experienced superstardom in the late 1970s thanks to Grease and Saturday Night Fever, but by the 1990s he was in something of a career wilderness.

His most recent movie offerings had been in the Look Who’s Talking trilogy, the first two films of which also featured his Pulp Fiction co-star Bruce Willis as the voice of a wise-cracking baby.

As a movie obsessive who worked as a video store clerk during his formative years, Tarantino still believed Travolta had lost nothing of his original talent.

Travolta’s performance in Brian De Palma’s cult 1981 thriller Blow Out had convinced him that the former Grease teen idol was the perfect fit for the role of Vincent Vega.

The rest is history: Travolta’s performance earned him an Oscar nomination and a renaissance in his movie career. For the rest of the decade, he was one of Hollywood’s most highly paid actors.

Elsewhere, there were smaller parts for the returning Reservoir Dogs cast members Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth. The cast also included familiar faces of past and future Hollywood, such as Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette and Ving Rhames.

Tarantino’s work has been a magnet for criticism throughout his career.

Whilst the press and audience of 1994 were more occupied with the violent aspects of his work, a modern audience in 2024 may be more shocked by the liberal use of abrasive language in the film.

The decades since the film's release have not been without controversy – in particular, sensitivity to the racial slurs written into his films.

The director’s liberal use the N-word in past scripts has led some to retrospectively question the motivation, including whether he cheapened the insult by using it as a provocative device. His defence was that he would be lying or at least not being true if his characters did not speak the words that they would say in reality.

Sensitivity 30 years on: some things change, some things stay the same.

When interviewed by Kirsty Wark he was once again asked about the impact of Pulp Fiction.

Others suggested that the level of homage to his beloved movies bordered on plagiarism.

Fans of his work would suggest that this is in fact his special move: distilling his encyclopaedic knowledge into works of art that both salute the past and create something entirely new.

Those who felt that Tarantino may be a one-trick-pony or whose appeal would fade have been proved firmly wrong.

As the veteran director of nine films spanning genres including westerns, thrillers, comedies, dramas and martial arts, he says his next movie will be his last – and he wants to go out on a high.

When Tarantino and fellow director Danny Boyle were guests on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show in 2015, Boyle described Tarantino as having "kicked the door in, of the way we watch cinema" - the ultimate compliment perhaps to a video store geek, film enthusiast and masterful 'bloody' magpie filmmaker.