Royal Tramp

Royal Tramp is a 1992 Hong Kong wuxia comedy film based on Louis Cha's novel The Deer and the Cauldron. The film was one of the five top grossing Hong Kong films in 1992; Stephen Chow, who played the protagonist Wai Siu-bo, also starred in the other four of those films. The film was followed by a sequel, Royal Tramp II, in the same year. Plot Wai Siu-bo is a bard known for his quick wit and tall stories. One day, the police ambush Chan Kan-nam, the leader of the revolutionary Heaven and Earth Society, at the brothel where Siu-bo works. Siu-bo saves Chan Kan-nam and asks him to teach him kung-fu in return. Kan-nam accepts and inducts Siu-bo into the Heaven and Earth Society as his apprentice, with his first assignment being to infiltrate the palace and steal some secret materials. Members are marked by the Society's mantra on their feet, but Kan-nam only manages to write down two on Siu-bo's left foot before he flinches from ticklishness. On the day of the palace recruitment, Siu-bo accidentally stumbles into the eunuch room before being saved by Hoi Tai-fu, the palace's head eunuch. Suspicious of the Empress Dowager's identity and unable to confront her himself, Tai-fu strongarms Siu-bo into stealing the Empress Dowager's copy of the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters. When Siu-bo is discovered, Tai-fu fights off the Empress, who possesses an unexpected level of combat prowess. Amidst the conflict, Siu-bo inadvertently befriends the Princess and the Emperor, thinking that they are eunuchs. The Emperor offers to give Siu-bo both his copy and the Empress' copies of the Sutra if he can defeat the Emperor in a fight. Siu-bo fights dirty and defeats the Emperor after grabbing his crotch, only to realize that the pair are royalty. Shortly afterward, one of the Emperor's seditious Generals, Oboi, bursts in to make demands. When Siu-bo successfully maneuvers the Emperor around a political confrontation with Oboi, and the Princess uncovers that Siu-bo is not a eunuch himself, he is promoted to the position of spy for the Emperor, told to keep an eye on Tai-fu and Oboi. The Princess, enamored with Siu-bo, has her way with him that evening. When the Empress Dowager finds them in the bedroom afterward, she threatens to kill him before Tai-fu once again interferes. They deliver critical wounds to each other, bringing the fight to a standstill. Siu-bo then accidentally injures Tai-fu, turning him into a child-like state and becomes subservient to Siu-Bo.