The ninth and final Torchy Blane movie. This one stars Jane Wyman and Allen Jenkins, replacing Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane. Tom Kennedy stays on as Gahagan. The plot has Torchy going undercover to prison to get closer to a gangster's girlfriend. Wyman and Jenkins are fun but it's hard not to compare them to Farrell and MacLane, who perfected these roles and had much better chemistry. Ultimately, the individual pieces are greater than the whole here. I can't say I wasn't entertained. A good cast goes a long way. The highlights include Gahagan wrestling, Torchy stopping a prison fight, and characters with colorful names like Denver Eddie.

(There are Spoilers) Both Jane Wyman and Allen Jerkins replace Glenda Ferrell & Barton MacLane as newspaper women Torchy Blane and her boyfriend Det, now promoted to police lieutenant,Steve McBride in this Torchy Blane series finale.Torchy as usual gets herself into hot water in getting herself arrested, by setting off 11 false fire alarms, so she can be close to the fugitive hoodlum Denver Eddie's, Eddie Marr, shoplifting girlfriend Jackie McGuire, Sheila Bromley, and find out where he's hold up. Later breaking out of womens prison both Torchy & Jackie end up in San Francisco where Jackie is to meet her boyfriend when he finally resurfaces. As this is all happening both Torchy's boyfriend police Let. McBride and his partner, the Irish poet who don't know it, Gahagan (Tom Kennedy) keep a tail on her until Denver Eddie who despite being wanted in 48 states and Mexico, with his photo in every post office in both countries, is completely unidentifiable just by wearing a pair of shades or sun glasses!Denver Eddie's hoods who end up kidnapping Let. McBride, who was posing as one of them, end up getting wasted by not keeping a close eye on McBride or having him handcuffed. As for McBride's partner Gahagan who's using the cover of wrestler "Harry the Horse", to fool Denver Eddie and his boys, he ends up in the ring with his former wrestling rival back in the Navy "The Bone Crusher", Tiny Roebuck.***SPOILER*** As things turn out Gahagan, or "Harry the Horse", puts an end to Denver Eddie's life of crime by Eddie being at the arena, together with Jackie & Torchy Blane, to watch the match between him and the "Bone Crusher". Even though it wasn't part of the act, between Gahagan & the "Bone Crusher",in the wrestling ring Gahagan's totally unexpected and spectacular flying exit, courtesy of the "Bone Crusher", put an end to Denver Eddie's life on the lamb.

The trouble with all those Torchy Blane movies were that they were all too similar in plot and style. In other words, if you've seen one, you've seen them all.Once again, Torchy finds a way to nab a criminal for her policeman pal Steve McBride, with the roles now played by JANE WYMAN and ALLEN JENKINS. Needless to say, they're not a convincing match. Wyman does all of her cutesy tricks that she employed during her early days at Warner Bros., and Jenkins plays a dumb cop in his usual style, for laughs. TOM KENNEDY is still on hand as the bumbling helpmate of the two, this time involved in a wrestling match that spins the film toward its finale.Fast moving entertainment, it's a B-film that played the second half of a double feature in 1939. Apparently, it didn't catch on as well as the series did with Glenda Farrell in the lead, so it became the last film of the Torchy Blane series.

For the final entry of this series, Torchy Blane, girl reporter on a quaint metropolitan New York newspaper gets herself pinched speeding to file a story. Turns out to be a lucky break because she gets tossed into jail with Sheila Bromley, girlfriend of notorious bank robber Eddie Marr. The original stars of the series, Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane as NYPD Detective Steve McBride were replaced by Jane Wyman and Allen Jenkins. This may have been the only time in screen history that Allen Jenkins got the girl. They were fine in the parts, but the public didn't accept them and the series was discontinued.Along though for the final ride was Tom Kennedy who was McBride's cop sidekick as he was for the rest of the series. Kennedy was a former boxer who was also a former wrestler. Familiarity with the squared circle plays an important part in what was a most interesting climax to the film.Torchy Plays With Dynamite was something I'm sure entertained many people on the double bill who might have come to see one of Warner Brothers big budget attractions like Dodge City in 1939. It's fast paced and amusing and no one I'm sure walked out.