By: M Wayne Welsch
The Logger’s Melody is a film by Gast Ditch Productions. It was written by M Wayne Welsch, Ralph Schultz, and Brandon Welsch.
Seven to eight feet tall. A werewolf. Just a legend or is this tale based on reality? The Michigan Dogman has been sighted all over Michigan since the late 1800s. 1887 to be exact. Gyppo lumberjacks first spotted the beast on a job up in Wexford County Michigan. A gyppo is a lumberjack or group of lumberjacks that work for a small-scale logging operation that is independent of an established sawmill or lumber company, sort of like independent subcontractors.
According to legend, popularized by a song written by a morning DJ, The dogman appears on a ten-year cycle. Every year which ends in a seven. This means we are due for another slew of sightings sometime in 2027. There have been countless encounters, a farmer, or chin whisker as we call them, was found dead slumped over his plow with large dog tracks all around. Another story from 1937 tells of large claw marks which would have only been made by a large canine-humanoid creature, found on the front door of a chapel.
Though there are many stories of dogman sightings, our story centers on where the legend began. In a nameless logging camp in Wexford County, where the Manistee river ran. The Logger’s Melody follows the origin of the dogman with a gyppo in Wexford county. Johnson is the protagonist who struggles with the burden that the spirit of the dogman bestows upon him throughout the film. The film starts off with a lone wolf running through the forest not far away from the lumberjack, the song Michigan I-O is playing. It was an old Lumberjack camp song sang by lumberjacks to build comradery over their hellish situation deep in the Michigan Forest. The spirit of the wolf travels through the woods and lands on Johnson who is the captain of the operation.
After realizing that they are running out of time, and sidelined from a feeling of unease, Johnson forfeits his foreman duties to Arthur. Arthur is a seasoned veteran of logging but his presence immediately feels a bit uncertain. He does not have any direct interaction with any of the group other than Johnson for the duration of the film.
Arthur makes the decision for the group to split up the side-rods (laborers) and gandy dancers (slang for railroad workers) in order to fulfill their duties before sunset. It is the last day of a three-month job and they’d really like to get back to their families and prostitutes back in Ludington. Half of the company split from the main group and the story revolves around the interaction of Johnson, Arthur, and Riggs. After realizing that they’re lost in the woods, against Arthur’s advice to stay put. They finally decide to set up camp, we learn from Riggs that they are illegally cutting the timber from Native American land. He believes that the forest is cursed and just wants to collect his paycheck and get the hell out of there. This begins to make some sense to Johnson, who was struck by the spirit of the dogman at the beginning of the film. The goal here was to convey that they were trespassing on Native American-owned timbers, and the consequences would be the curse of the dogman, which Johnson fell victim to.
We get some sense that Arthur is worried about something because he is oddly drawn to monitoring his crew and especially concerned that there is a full moon. He pulls out a silver bullet from his pocket whilst preparing for slumber. Johnson and Riggs get drunk and discuss the importance of the human soul, and whether or not that translates to dogs. After becoming upset, Riggs drunkenly wanders off when they are out of whisky. This is the beginning of the time loop that Johnson and Arthur find themselves in, and where the philosophical questions that the movie addresses come into play.
“Our grub the dogs they’d laugh at, our beds built on the snow. Oh God grant there is no bigger Hell than Michigan I-O.”
How do you want your soul to rest? Should it be eternal or succumb to oblivion? Johnson delves into insanity while attempting to control the ultimate destination. It is man’s uncertainty about this question that causes the fear turned to hope presented by the dogman’s existence. The dogman represents the oblivion, which at first seems bad, but over the course of the story seems good. The need of the characters to get back home as well as their dreamlike difficulties doing so (time is not linear) represent the chance for a soul’s life in eternity, but it poses the question. “Is an eternal life desirable to mortality? Johnson and Arthur are the same guy who is struggling with the inner struggle of God and the afterlife. Johnson is not firm in his roots and has no baseline morality. Which allows him to be possessed by the spirit of the dogman.
The narrative takes place over several full moons, which is meant to show that Johnson is left pondering the deepest questions of eternity with only his shadow self (Arthur) in the woods for several months with no hope of rescue. Johnson almost convinces himself (Arthur), after a fight between the two, that a nihilistic approach is more desirable. The two men built a campfire where they discuss love. Through Arthur, Johnson receives the answer to the question of how his wife was killed. He lost his wife many years ago when he was on a logging expedition and she was caught up in a tempest wind on their homestead. This causes him to finally face his confrontation head-on. He runs away after Arthur confides the secret to him. Arthur and Johnson are the same people, Arthur desperately wants to become stronger as one, while Johnson is stuck in a perpetual spiral of questioning.
We see Arthur searching for Johnson at the climax of the film. Arthur stumbles upon clues that there is a dogman nearby, and he knows that it is Johnson. We finally see Johnson as the Dogman as he decides to attack Arthur, his shadow self. He is really attacking his desire to believe in eternal life because he is scared of the consequences. Johnson is unsure if he is worthy to transcend this realm. The film comes to its peak when Arthur gets the silver bullet loaded into the gun just in time to take a shot at the charging werewolf (Johnson).
We cut to Johnson sitting at the original location at the beginning of the narrative, which actually was only one night, but to Johnson and Arthur, it felt like months or even eternity. Johnson puts on Arthur’s hat and takes a puff of Arthur’s pipe. He hasn’t killed Arthur, nor did Arthur kill him. They have reconciled through the madness, Johnson has won his struggle with himself. The wretched cursed timbers of Michigan, (Brilliantly depicted in the song “Michigan I-O” ) in which Johnson has been spending the last several months, is a metaphor for a test from God, much like he tested Job in the desert. He has conquered his nihilism and is ready to live the rest of his life for God, he realizes that through eternity and in the afterlife, he will be able to hold his wife’s hand once more.
The remainder of the logging outfit finally finds Johnson sitting on the log puffing the pipe after searching for him all morning. They decide that their work is done and Chester is very excited to go to Ludington to get another glimpse of Mary’s titties.
