Instant Favorite.

A Brilliant Conflict

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

If only this wonderful little show were easily available on DVD! The Feb 19, 1959 episode "Hell or High Water" depicts Yancy saving New Orleans from flood by dynamiting the levee! This episode alone might have prevented the disaster following Katrina...or not. Anyway, this was a marvelous program that remains simultaneously a relic of its era and a charming, romantic, and sincere homage to the great American city of New Orleans. It was only on for one brief year, and, though I was no more than a toddler when it showed, the unique images of Jock Mahoney's Yancy and his stoic Indian sidekick Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah,so powerfully effected my psyche I never forgot them--just like so many other reviewers here. Yet for years, whenever I described the show to fellow Boomers, they shook their head. Nobody else remembered Yancy Derringer. At least not until the Great Mr. Gore invented the Internet! Huzzah and hooray for us all! In 2009 I finally encountered someone with a single old VHS copy of the above episode, so I happily renewed my childhood thrill. CBS--please release this golden oldies treasure.

I loved this series when I was a kid. The main thing I remember was that it had an espionage component, and Yancy was always undercover. Pahoo was totally cool and carried unusual weapons: Pahoo carried a sawed off shotgun over his shoulder, and a big knife, I think. This was the first wire work for stunts that I ever saw. When the shotgun blast hit the bad guys it would send them flying across the room. You saw all this on TV! It's a commonplace type of rigging nowadays, but then it was completely new. I think Yancy carried a sword cane as well as his derringers which were concealed around his body. Would love to see an episode again.

Never missed it. It came on 1/2 hour after school let out and if the bus was late, I'd miss some of the early minutes. The reason Pahoo couldn't speak and signed was that his tongue had been cut out by the Sioux. As a grade schooler,I used to play Pahoo with the neighborhood recreations of the show. I kept a rubber knife in my collar, a toy double barrel under a shoulder carried blanket and a headband with a couple of down pointing feathers. When trouble started, my friend would signal, "Pahoo" and I'd throwback the blanket to give them both barrels. And I never forgot the all important black bars on the cheeks. I never got good with the knife pass routine.

. . . they speak of Yancey D."So went the theme song to this undeservedly short-lived series. Nominally billed as a "western" (Yancey did, after all, wear a broad-brimmed hat, there were horses about, and his best friend was an Indian), this show was hard to categorize, even in the era of the so-called "adult western."There was always the hint of a dark side to Yancey, all things considered; a feeling that tucked away behind his reserved manner lay a past that may not always have been too cool (or, alternately, as a friend of mine once suggested, perhaps a bit TOO cool). Moreover, unlike most of his contemporary action heroes, Mr. D. didn't always fight fair: forced into a bare-knuckles match against an huge opponent, Yancey took advantage of his knowledge that the guy had spent the previous night guzzling beer, hammering him into collapse with a series of belly punches you could almost feel through the TV screen.Not the nicest guy in town, in other words. But eminently effective. And thoroughly watchable. A great series.