"Tabasco Road" is a 1957 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Robert McKimson.
It stars Speedy Gonzales. The cartoon starts with a zoom-in to a Mexican cantina, which is empty except for the bartender cleaning up. The camera then zooms further in onto a mousehole which is actually a tiny "cantinita", where the mice are having a party for Speedy Gonzales, "the fastest mouse in all Mexico."
The party breaks up. Speedy's very very drunk cousins, Pablo and Fernando, start staggering home through an alley, only to encounter a big alley cat. Because they're drunk, they decide to pick a fight, forcing Speedy to come to the rescue of his cousins.
"Tabasco Road" provides examples of:
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Speedy apologizes to the viewer for him going too fast to see. Then at the end he addresses the camera once more, saying "Here we go again!"
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: The cat's eyes are perfectly visible as he peers out from the otherwise dark trash can.
- Funetik Aksent: A sign that says "Ceety Leemits" kind of helps one understand why Speedy Gonzales cartoons aren't shown as much as the other classic Warner Brothers characters.
- Here We Go Again!: Speedy works his butt off to save his cousins, only to turn a corner and find them challenging an entire alley lined with cats. A cheerful Speedy actually says "Here we go again!", then chases off after them.
- Impairment Shot: A very blurry shot of Speedy through the eyes of one of his drunk cousins.
- Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: Of course the bartender is doing this at the start of the cartoon. (The mouse bartender isn't.)
- Pun-Based Title: The short's title is a play on Tabasco (a brand of pepper sauce) and the 1932 novel Tobacco Road.
- Shout-Out: To Tweety Bird. One mouse spots the cat and says "I think I saw un pussygato." The other one answers "You did, you did see a pussygato."
- Speed Blitz: Speedy rescues his cousin in a blur of motion that ends with the cat seemingly have an explosion in his stomach. Then he turns to the viewer, apologizes, and shows the whole sequence in slow-motion, which shows Speedy rescuing his cousin and then throwing a stick of dynamite down the cat's mouth.
- Too Dumb to Live: When Pablo and Fernando spot the alley cat, instead of trying to run for it, they decide to challenge the cat to a fight! It’s no wonder that the cat decides that they’re crazy. But it’s justified by the mice being incredibly drunk.
