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I've just watched 'Pulp Fiction' on BBC2 (I've seen it many times before) and I remembered some things I read a few years ago, that were written by an American film historian. There is so much more to that film than meets the eye and if you are aware of the following, the film takes on a whole new meaning. You will need to have seen it a few times, and be very familiar with it, to fully get the following:

When Vincent and Jules visit Brett and co in the flat at the beginning, they are going to get Marcellus's soul back. That is the yellow glowing thing in the brief case that Vincent looks into, and the thing that the robber, Ringo, looks at in the diner at the end. In the Bible it says that if you make a Faustian Pact with the Devil and you lose, he will remove your soul from your body by making a single cut in the back of your neck.

Every time you see Marcellus he has a small plaster on the back of his neck. Also, when Vincent sets the combination on the case to open it, in Brett's kitchen, the combination is '666' - the number of the Devil obviously. Later on, Jules see the light and realises he is 'the tyranny of evil men' and he gets to live.

Vincent, in the final segment of the film, is gunned down in Butch's apartment by Butch himself. That segment of the film is shown as the middle section however - the correct order would be to swap the middle and last section's around (the story actually ends with Butch and his girlfriend riding off on Zed's chopper on the way to catch the train).

After Jules has seen the light and has said he is quitting the life - in the scene in the car where Marvin accidentally gets his head blown off - Vincent isn't getting what Jules is saying about how he is leaving it all behind. Marvin then gets accidentally killed. In the diner later, Jules says to Ringo the robber, 'when you yell at me I get scared and when mother f-ers gets scared that's when mother f-ers accidentally gets shot'.

That is a direct reference to Vincent's failure to get what Jules said, as Jules was repenting, and as a result Jules lives and Vincent is killed. The whole flim is about repenting and those who do are spared. The only innocent, undeserving, person in the film to be killed is the bystander when Butch and Marcellus are having the gunfight in the street after Butch runs him over.

After Vincent and Jules leave the diner (when the credit's role at the end of the film as we see it) they arrive at Marcellus's bar, where he is having the chat with Butch about 'taking a dive in the fifth'. They walk in in the 'volleyball gear' they have been wearing since leaving Jimmy's house. There is then a strange eyeballing moment between Butch and Vincent, who don't know each other.

As Vincent walks away, Butch is looking puzzled - a kind of 'do I know him from somewhere?' sort of expression. Maybe it was already set in stone at that point that the unrepentant Vincent would meet his end at the hands of Butch in the apartment. That is the very moment also where Jules hands Marcellus his soul back (in the briefcase).

Very interesting. Make a mental note of these things and watch it again - the film takes on a whole new meaning. I don't think I've ever seen a film with so many hidden things.

In the original script the contents of the suitcase were jewellery. However, as the film was being made it was thought that it would be fun to leave the contents of the suitcase as an open question. That way each viewer could make it whatever he personally thought it was.

The 'soul' interpretation is a good one but I believe there are several other interpretations of the film.

The plaster on the back of the neck was a last minute decision by a make up girl, without consulting the director or any of the production staff. The actor had a scar there and she just decided to cover it with a plaster.

Such is the thinking of Mr Tarantino but alas i remember him being interviewed when i was such an avid reader of film mags like Premiere and he didnt have an answer for that preferring it to some kind of enigma what was in the case. (I also have the script and thewre was no mention of this there either)

This must be something that was developed as an answer to that enigma of "what is in the case" after the film came out.

But yes it makes it all the more fascinating. Old Tazza is a master of the spin but makes superbly entertaining movies nonetheless.

He's definitely got a fan in me.

It is certainly open-ended but things do lead towards the 'soul in the briefcase' scenario. I heard someone say once they thought it was the belt that Butch had won in the boxing match, in the case - although as he jumped out of the window and escaped, I doubt he was around to collect it. When Brett gets shot in the flat early on, you see the whole room glowing in yellow as he is killed - so if that is his spirit ('soul') leaving his body when he is dying then it suggests that it is a 'soul' in the case too - as that glows with the same 'yellow' when the case is opened. What really suggests that it is Marcellus's sole though is, like I mentioned, the details of what happens in a Faustian Pact (the removal of your soul from your body, by the Devil, by a single cut to the back of the neck) and the fact Marcellus has that plaster on the back of his neck every time you see him. Also the '666' combination of the briefcase. The fact that the evil thug Ringo, the robber in the diner at the end, is touched and says what's in the case is 'beautiful' suggests it is something more than just a material object in there - something to do with the divine perhaps.

At least twice in the film a man called Tony Rocky-Horror is mentioned for several minutes. Once when Vincent and Jules are arriving at the apartment building at the start - where they kill Brett and his friends in the flat upstairs a few minutes later. Jules talks about how Tony gave Marcellus's wife Mia (played by Uma Thurman) a foot massage and how Marcellus had him thrown out of a 4th floor window because of it. This is also covered in the scene at Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant where Vincent and Mia are having dinner. Tony is never seen, only talked about in the film, but talked about enough to confirm that he is a significant person in the evolution of the story. I have no idea how he may or may not fit in to the whole issue of what is in the case, Marcellus's soul etc, but the references to him must be significant otherwise he wouldn't be talked about, at least twice, and in depth.

Does it really matter. The suitcase is a McGuffin, a reason to have the Jules and Vincent characters in the situations they find themselves in.

Might as well obsess over the stolen money in Psycho.

Well, does anything in films really matter? If there are elements of films that are intruiging it is good to expand upon them and try to get to the bottom of them.

Great stuff..Pulp Fiction is a fine work..wish I had left it to the world!

Having not seen it since its initial release, it struck me as a rather vapid and frankly dull experience last night, with a strong whiff of the emperor's new clothes about it too.

It's certainly not aged well.

One thing I noticed when I watched it for the umpteenth time last night was the house that the drug dealer Lance lived in may well be the same house that Mr Strickland lived in in 'Back To The Future II'. When Marty returns to the alternate 1985 he visits his old teacher Mr Strickland, who pulls a shotgun on him on the porch of the house and says 'so you're the son of a bitch who's been stealing my newspapers!' (a case of mistaken identity). You get a clear shot of the front of the house and I am quite sure that is the same frontage you see when Vincent drives across Lance's lawn and crashes his car into the wall in 'Pulp Fiction' - when Vincent arrives with the overdosing Mia in the pasenger seat. Probably used the same film lot in California.

Particularly coincidental when you consider that Eric "Lance" Stoltz was the original Marty McFly (apparently the shoot-out with the Libyans at the start still features him) before Michael J Fox got the gig.