The year was 1994 and unless you were living in an ice cave somewhere in the Arctic, you couldn't have escaped the hype around the new film by Quentin Tarantino. It created a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the coveted Palme d'Or and being nominated for seven Academy Awards, eventually clinching an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It also turned Tarantino into one of Cannes' favourite adopted sons and he is returning to the Film Festival with his latest offering, the curiously titled Inglourious Basterds.

Pulp Fiction now appears on almost every ‘100 greatest films of all time' list and is often hailed as the most influential film of the 1990s. So how does a crime thriller filled with gangs, violence and drugs, go from being just another violent mob fest to one of the greatest cinematic offerings of all time?

To start with, the cast list reads like a ‘Who's Who' of Hollywood circa 1994. John Travolta plays Vincent Vega, a loveable mob hit man who together with his partner Jules Winnfield (memorably played by Samuel L Jackson,) utters some of the most memorable film dialogue ever spoken. Their superb performances are supported by Ving Rhames as mob boss Marsellus Wallace, Uma Thurman as his wife Mia and Bruce Willis, who appears as the prizefighter Butch Coolidge. Add in Harvey Keitel as the ‘cleaner' Wolf, Eric Stolz as the drug supplier Lance, Roseanna Arquette as his wife, Tim Roth as small-time thief Pumpkin and Amanda Plummer as his partner Honey Bunny and you have a veritable hall of fame.

Then we have the plot, which is twisted in every sense of the word. With three distinct but interrelated storylines told out of chronological order, this isn't a film where you can nip off to the loo without pressing the pause button. The opening scene gives us the first storyline, that of Pumpkin and Honey Bunny sitting in a diner contemplating their next ‘job' and debating the idea of robbing a bank versus just robbing the diner they are sitting in.

Cue the Dick Dale surf music and opening credits and the second storyline begins, with Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield on the way to a job, talking about what a cheeseburger is called in Amsterdam and Vincent's upcoming job as babysitter of their boss's wife, Mia. In this storyline, we get to see Travolta dance again, which in itself is reason enough to see the film.

The third storyline, the most absurd of the three, revolves around Butch Coolidge being asked to throw his next fight, his attachment to a family heirloom that has literally been in his family for years and a scene straight out of Deliverance, including redneck homosexuals and bondage gear.

Throw in a controversial mix of humour and violence, sharp dialogue, a casually hip soundtrack, countless popular culture references and a scene where someone's heart is restarted by a plunging needle filled with an overdose antidote and you have yourself a film that others will try to emulate for years to come.

Pulp Fiction raised the bar for all those that followed. It's been dubbed a prime example of post-modern film and a cultural watershed and there's no doubt that Pulp Fiction is the by-product of one of the most fantastically twisted and absurd minds working in the film industry today. I'm not sure if I would want to live in one of Tarantino's worlds but the world of cinema is certainly lucky to have him.

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