'What Morons': 'Spinal Tap' Director Calls Out Black Sabbath

Rob Reiner, the director of 1984's This Is Spinal Tap, says the members of Black Sabbath were extremely upset over one portion of the movie but had no reason to be.

At one point in This Is Spinal Tap, the band plans on having an enormous recreation of Stonehenge made for their stage, but a communication breakdown leads to the statue being only 18 inches tall. When the film was released in 1984, Black Sabbath fully believed Reiner had stolen their idea.

Sabbath had, indeed, used a Stonehenge recreation on tour. Their measurements were also off, leading to a much bigger display than intended.

"When we rehearsed at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, the stones were set up on the floor and actually looked really expressive," Geezer Butler recalled in his memoir Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath―And Beyond. "But when we did our first gig of the tour in Norway, and put the stones on the stage, they were almost touching the ceiling."

However, this incident occurred in 1983, well after Reiner's team came up with their Stonehenge idea, which had been in the works for years and was filmed in 1982.

"Black Sabbath was doing a tour [without Ozzy Osbourne], and they came out about two or three weeks before our film came out, [and they had Stonehenge]," Reiner recently shared with Screen Rant. "They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them."

While This Is Spinal Tap did take inspiration from a variety of real rock 'n' roll stories, this was not one of them, Reiner assured.

"To me, it was the best thing, because what morons," he continued. "What did they think? They [thought] that we shot the film, we edited it, [and] we got it into the theaters in two weeks? I mean, it is ludicrous. But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment: that they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them."

This Is Spinal Tap's will be celebrating its 41st anniversary with a re-release, and will be available to watch in theaters for a limited time starting July 5.

Watch the Stonehenge Scene in 'This Is Spinal Tap'