European Vacation: Toppling Stonehenge, American Style!

photos are stills from this Youtube video of the Stonehenge scene in European Vacation

We know we’ve mentioned it before, but this one seems like it should have its own post, possibly the last in our film series for a while. The movie’s title is European Vacation, but everyone knows it as National Lampoon’s European Vacation, one of a series of movies in which the Griswold/Griswald family, led by parents Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) go on disastrous holidays.

Of course they hit the big European tourist spots, and Stonehenge is not left out. As they leave, Clark Griswald makes a speech about it having stood the test of time, “a thing of glory for a million generations to see.” He then gets into the car, backs into one of the stones, and knocks the entire circle (set up almost like a spiral) down. (See video of the Stonehenge scene here.)

Okay, haha, no denying it’s funny in a broad slapstick way. But our job is to look at the replica or replicas involved. It is a peculiar one, a circle of tall thin trilithons, no attempt at making it a linteled circle like the real one, with a circle rather than a horseshoe of taller trilithons inside.

No bluestones, understandably. They would just complicate the scene and most people don’t know they’re there (or else think the sarsens are bluestones). No ditch and bank visible, but the landscape in the background looks enough like Salisbury Plain to pass.

All in all, although its peculiar proportions put us in mind of the mini-Stonehenge in the gardens at Cockington Green in Australia near Canberra, it’s not a bad replica when compared to many others. We do not know for certain whether only one replica was used to make the movie or if a miniature model was used for some shots of the monument falling down.

Score: 7½ druids for this movie replica, made to fall. A note to British and European Stonehenge fans: next time you object to the barriers that keep tourists from walking among and touching the stones at Stonehenge, remember the Griswalds and think whether it may not be better that English Heritage is keeping the Americans out! Who knows how many shocking offenses have been averted.

Of course there are even British people who take it as a challenge to somehow topple the monument, and those who claim Stonehenge as it stands was an invention of the English tourist industry of the early 1900’s and not worth knocking down. This is the internet age. People will say and do anything. There’s even a blog about Stonehenge replicas. We kid you not!

Building Stonehenge at Stonehenge, A Trilithon Model

photos are stills from Pete Glastonbury’s Youtube clip, used with permission

Here is one for the record books. Only once before, during the first month Clonehenge existed, did we post a replica that was actually at Stonehenge (Straw echo henge–wow,our posts were short back then!) Here is another one, this time, in keeping with our film and movie theme of late, from a CBS TV special made in 1964 called (like so many other things) The Mystery of Stonehenge.

It happens that a contributor to that TV special, Gerald Hawkins, author of the well-known book Stonehenge Decoded (one of those books that has been on our shelves for so long that we couldn’t say when we bought it!), was an acquaintance of our friend and frequent contributor Mr. Pete Glastonbury. Mr. Glastonbury uncovered a copy of the film in Mr. Hawkins’ archives and sent us the link to this delightful bit at Stonehenge in which Professor Richard Atkinson explains to a CBS reporter how he thinks the monument was built, putting a trilithon replica together in the process. (In the smaller photo here you can see a real sarsen upright in the background.)

What can we say? For the Stonehenge replica nerd, this is about as good as it gets–a renowned Stonehenge scholar putting together a Stonehenge replica at Stonehenge–on film. Score: 7½ druids! It’s great, true, but that’s as high as we can go for what is only a miniature trilithon.

This probably won’t be the last of these old-ish films. We’ve read that Hawkins was filmed explaining his theories using a plastic Stonehenge model and some lighting to simulate the sun shining into the monument at different times of year. If we can find it, we’ll post that, too.

Meanwhile, if all this academia is making you homesick for good old Spinal Tap, here is our post on that. We don’t want to stay too serious about Stonehenge replicas, dudes and dudettes. They are inherently silly things.

Happy henging!

Note added later: Oddly, completely by coincidence, Stonehenge Collectables’ latest addition to their site is a press release and TV Guide listing about a rerun of this CBS special in 1973. You can see it here.

Stonehenge Apocalypse: And We’re Back to Hollywood

photo totally nicked from Misha Collins’ Twitpics, which we’re pretty sure are meant as promotional pics

The movies–the good, the bad, the indifferent, and in this case, the never-yet-aired. This movie is Stonehenge Apocalypse. The plot on IMDB reads like this: “When a group of archaeologists dig up a human skeleton near the historical monument of STONEHENGE, an ancient piece of machinery hidden beneath the bedrock is discovered. Not knowing what it could be the workers accidentally trigger the mechanism and start a chain of events that may very well end the world as we know it.”

The world as we know it? Man, it is long gone at this point. Who says that anymore? But we’re not the ad copy police. (They won’t let us carry handcuffs!) So let’s look at this Stonehenge replica. We think it’s a pretty good trilithon. You can see other shots of it here and here. Score: 7½ druids. Good lichens, but it is just a trilithon.

So you may ask, why does Doctor Who get to film at the real Stonehenge while this film didn’t? Well, people, that’s why they call him The Doctor, innit? It helps to be a beloved national institution!

Meanwhile, here’s a synopsis of Stonehenge Apocalypse from the New York Times: “Stonehenge mystically begins rearranging itself causing massive unexplained natural destruction around the world.” No one seems to know just when it will air, but when it does we doubt it will reach Doctor Who audience levels. But we would love it if it surprised us. Any movie with a Stonehenge replica is one we’d watch!

Happy henging!

Snowhenge – Michigan Druids Unravel the Ancient Enigma

photo from the Snowhenge blog on Blogspot, used with permission

“The ancient DRUIDS did it with stone, the Michigan DRUIDS do it with snow.” So says the Snowhenge blog from which this picture came. We distinguish it from the blog of friend-of-Clonehenge David Mantripp at snowhenge dot net, who took the photo that marked our first posted snowhenge.

We’ve done several snowhenges since then and we’ve seen many more that never made it to our pages, but most of them have been from places exotic, mainly Antarctica (here’s another, and another), where the Stonehenge-building field is strong and mankind cannot resist its power, and the even more exotic Bristol! This time our outstanding snowhenge is/was in humble Michigan.

Yes, Michigan is once more pushing to reclaim its briefly-held title of the Stonehenge State, after having it cruelly ripped from its claws by Washington State which no doubt wanted a name that people wouldn’t mistake for the national capital. To recap in case you’ve forgotten, Michigan is home to the little replica at Raven Hill Discovery Center, the all-over-the-web famous Wally Wallington’s Forgotten Technology henge (did he ever finish that thing?), and best of all, the beautiful Nunica Henge, in our opinion one of the finest ever made. Bravo, Michigan!

But alas, while this snowhenge is large, it is not a permanent replica. “Standing 6.5 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter and consisting of nearly 1000 cubic feet of packed snow, Snowhenge’s 12 pillars and 12 lintels are perfectly aligned astronomical markers. Looking directly through the hole in the center of pillar 3 soon after sunset on Winter Solstice extraordinarily reveals an almost equilateral triangle formed by the visible planets Saturn (left), Mars (top), and Venus (right). . . . Outside the circle, three pairs of standing snowmen show where the sun rises and sets for each of the solstices and equinoxes.”

Clearly a lot of thought and work have gone into this henge, and judging by the copy on the blog we would hazard a guess that a lot of intoxicating substance, liquid or of another variety, went into its builders! We have trouble believing that “Numerous consecutive years of record heat spikes in Perth, Australia are directly responsible for the extraordinary cold snaps at MacKay Jaycees Family Park which will amazingly keep Snowhenge frozen all year round.”

But if that should happen, we would definitely add this henge to our list of large permanent replicas. It wouldn’t tie Michigan with Washington State, but it would certainly put them in striking distance! Permafrost would be a small price to pay for a chance at the title!

Score: Well, our snowhenge scores have been all over the place so far, but we’ll give this one a solid 8 druids. Why, if there’s no bluestone circle, no trilithon horseshoe, no ditch and bank?! It’s their prose, I’m afraid. Stupid silliness, as some have experienced, is the way to our hearts and our carefully-meted-out druids. And look at their closing line: “No matter the medium, the DRUIDS purpose remains the same – do it bigger, live it larger, play it harder, have some fun.” Hard to argue with that!

Our thanks to the illustrious Andy Burnham of the Megalithic Portal, who sent this our way, and to Peter Salisbury who gave the permissions. Happy henging!

More Stonehenge Movie Goodness

a poor quality still from a Youtube clip of King Arthur (Yes, I’m afraid we really are THAT lame!)

A quick posting of a few more movies with Stonehenge connections, starting with the rather amusing one in the 2004 movie King Arthur with Clive Owen and, the reason a lot of people went to see it, Keira Knightley as a rather scantily clad warrior maid. At the end of the movie they get married at a construction that a lot of people think is Stonehenge, although it is by the sea near Tintagel in Cornwall, some way from the real Stonehenge in Wiltshire. It is a nonexistent Stonehenge-ish thing made for the movie. Some video-ish shots of it can be seen here.

Another fun one is a less-known film called Merlin: The Return for which a Stonehenge replica was reportedly built in Africa where it was filmed. Alas, we have no picture of that one, but we’ve read that it situated Stonehenge in the woods, much as in this montage: Stonehenge as a Woodland Site.

Less fun and not actually involving Stonehenge replicas were the Tess movies over the years, various versions of the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. A scene in the novel takes place at Stonehenge and some have filmed at the site.

That includes the 2008 version made by BBC television and the 1979 version made by the infamous Roman Polanski with Nastassia Kinski in the lead role.

And last, and for a change also least, we may as well mention the movie Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Why? “Silver Shamrock, a mass-producer of Halloween masks, plan to kill millions of innocent people worldwide by placing pieces of a stolen boulder from Stonehenge into small tags and attaching them to the masks.” And from another webpage we learn why: “See, Stonehenge was a sacrificial altar and wields enormous power, that will make their heads explode and burst forth with crickets and snakes.” How cool is that!?

Eventually people do die, but we think they turn out to be robots or something. But there may be more–we confess we haven’t seen it. We just found the concept of destroying people using bits of Stonehenge as somehow amusing. Who comes up with this stuff?

Well, there are some more Stonehenge-related movies for you. We have at least one more to mention and we’ll get to that after an unrelated post or two. If you know of some we may have missed, please post a comment or email us at the email in the side bar. What a Stonehenge world this is!

Another Movie Replica: The Black Knight, 1954

photos are stills from this clip posted on TCM

We were going to do one post listing all the movies we know of so far that contain Stonehenge in some form. We’d already posted the movies This Is Spinal Tap and The Colour of Magic, and we thought we could round up the ones that were left in one quick post. Then we watched this video again. Lolz!!!1! It deserves a post of its own!

A synopsis of this section of the movie (from a full synopsis on this page) reads: “John, as the Black Knight, rides off to summon Arthur’s knights, as Linet, the abbot and the remaining monks are taken by the Vikings to the mysterious rocks of Stonehenge, where they are readied as sacrifice. Arthur, John and the knights arrive in time to rescue Linet and the clergymen and destroy Stonehenge.” But, trust us, this does not capture the madness of the wildly dancing girls, the heavily made-up so-called virgin about to be sacrificed, and the wild priests or druids presiding over it, let alone the dramatic rescue of said virgin and the about-to be roasted monks. Don’t you just hate those evil pagans?! 😉

Then, of course, there’s the pulling down of the stones at the end of the sequence. They come down quite easily, pulled by knights on horses. Think how that would have impacted on Britain’s tourist trade! Reminds us of National Lampoon’s European Vacation in which Chevy Chase backs into one trilithon and the whole thing goes down like dominoes. D***ed Americans!!

Score for this replica: 7½ druids. We think they did a fine job of mocking up what Stonehenge might have looked like long ago, considering it was 1954. As a matter of fact, we think they may have used the Maryhill replica (see here for our post on that one) for this aerial shot and just mocked up the parts they needed for the close-ups. Still, nicely done.

Our thanks to Bob Bradlee aka StonehengeGuy for steering us to this classic Stonehenge depiction. It is good to laugh!

Take Your Better-Looking Avatar to Stonehenge Second Life

Built in Second Life by Ewan Haggarty, sent to us by Pete Glastonbury

We don’t know much about Second Life. We haven’t figured out how to do something worthwhile with our first life, and we’re pretty sure spending more time on line than we already do isn’t the answer. But of course most people have their act together much better than we do, so for them having a second, virtual, life is an option. It’s probably a relief to enter a place away from routines and mundane concerns.

Second Life (Wikipedia explanation here) has all kinds of places to go, and people can build things there. So naturally there are Stonehenges. We mentioned a couple when we did a post on virtual Stonehenges before. As far as we know, each one is, in its context, a real Stonehenge, not a replica, although–who knows!–there may be virtual Stonehenge replicas there, too. If you know of any, do not hesitate to let us know!

Here’s a link to another, quite accurate Stonehenge made for Second Life. Here’s another Second Life Stonehenge on Flickr. We confess this is all mind boggling to us. We have this strange feeling that all these Stonehenges will have to come to blows someday like male mountain goats vying for the harem. We can see it now, all those huge stones hurling themselves at one another, trying to establish which is the real Stonehenge. When that happens, Second Lifers, get pictures!

Even with a virtual henge we can do what we do. Let’s see: bluestones? Check. Aubrey holes? Check. Sorta-kinda the ditch and bank. Half check. The stones are the wrong proportions and shapes, of course, but in the right places and anyway it’s catchy and you can dance to it. We’ll give it 7½ druids. (See how we’re just ignoring the floating orb, the small pyramid and the wasp-ish thing with breasts? We’re good at what we do! Do not try this at home!)

Who builds these Stonehenges in Second Life? Astronomers? Engineers? Druids? We’d be curious to know. But we’re glad to know that people take the things that inspire and awe them with them wherever they go!

Henge for a Chameleon–1946, Somewhere in a London Zoo

This is brilliant! British Pathé, a digital news archive, includes a video of chameleons climbing over a small Stonehenge replica at the London Zoo, like huge bizarre creatures of a past age. Brought to our attention by the magnificent yet under-appreciated Pete Glastonbury (unfairly gifted photographer whose speciality is ancient sites), this is probably the oldest existing video of a small Stonehenge replica.

Click >here< to see the British Pathé page, Prehistoric 1946, with video. (Totally worth clicking on just to hear the stentorian 1946 announcer and the ever-so-clever attempt at a humourous ending! ) The text on the page says, “Several shots of a chameleon moving around model of Stonehenge in a London Zoo. Some good close up shots of chameleons. This animal is half brother to lizard and looks like one. Man organises chameleons with hands – probably a zoo keeper.”

The replica is just four trilithons, but there it is, a bit of Stonehenge replica history. No scoring for this. It’s too awesome, too sexy for its trilithons! Please, if you have any old photos or videos of Stonehenge replicas, we want–no–we need to see them!

[This reminds us of the Stonehenge for Lizards post. Hmmm, there’s also the Stonehenge at the reptile zoo and the chocolate replica with the plastic lizards. We detect a pattern!. David Icke, where are you when we need you?! 😉 ]

Note: For those who don’t know, subscribers to our Twitter feed get links to extra henges from time to time, including our Friday foodhenges. In case you’re interested. Anyway, have a great weekend. Happy henging!

Icing Henge–Perhaps the Ultimate Stonehenge Cake!

photo and cake by Vanda Symon, with permission

It doesn’t often happen that a homemade henge turns up in our inbox unsolicited, although we love when it does. You can imagine how delighted we were to receive an email from summery New Zealand with this beautifully crafted cake in it.

Made by mystery author Vanda Symon for the eighth birthday of one of her sons, this cake shows a remarkable degree of realism, from the proportions of the individual stones to the trilithon horseshoe facing the three intact lintels in a row, to the placement of the fallen stones. Very nicely done!

We asked why make a Stonehenge cake for an eight-year-old’s party, and Ms. Symon replied, “The now Eight-Year-Old has always liked things that are old, mysterious and cool – so he wanted a wonders of the world party and the birthday party cake was going to be a pyramid or Stonehenge. We’d discussed a big gingerbread pyramid, but that wasn’t “cakey” enough, so he thought Stonehenge would be great because it’s essentially round, and hey, a cake is often round. Practical boy. I’m grateful he didn’t ask for the Colosseum!”

And so are we! Score for this cake, 8 druids, one for each of the birthday boy’s years, and our highest ever for a cake!

Ms. Symon goes on to say, “The cake was a big hit with the birthday guests, and the whole thing disappeared at the party, so Hubby didn’t even get a piece! There was also one of those surreal moments where all of the little guests were happily nibbling away on icing henges, ten kids eating things that looked like big rocks. Naturally they were beautifully sugared up in time for their parents to come and collect them.”

And on her blog she adds, “Damn chuffed with it, actually. Amazing what you can do with icing.”

True, though it wouldn’t hold up for thousands of years in the British weather. Sigh–now we’re all hungry!

A Little Stonehenge, a Cucumber, and Eleven

photos by Somara aka snarkygurl, with permission

[Strictly speaking this is not a Stonehenge replica, but a replica of a Stonehenge replica. The rare clonehenge clone!]

What a movie! What a cake! The movie This Is Spinäl Tap made the Stonehenge replica a household idea. We’ve often wondered what percentage of the 250 and counting posts we’ve put up would be here if it weren’t for Spinal Tap. Well, there is no doubt about today’s entry!

The baker/artist and photographer writes: “A friend of ours wanted to surprise her husband with a Spinal Tap cake for his birthday. She didn’t care what it looked like, so I had free reign to do what I wanted. I like it, other than the part where I accidentally made the strap too long, and where I lost the wrestling match with the white frosting.”

Well, we think she did an excellent job. Even got that cucumber-wrapped-in-tinfoil in there although much reduced in size!

And, speaking of reduced in size, our focus is, of course, the little Stonehenge replica, a trilithon, actually. We like the way the colouring on it is marbled to make it look like stone. It is very nicely done. Plus, it looks delicious. We hope it was.

Please note that the dials on the amp do say 11. That’s one higher! By the way, you can see our other posts concerning Spinal Tap here and here.

Score: 5 druids. It’s not much smaller than the one in the movie, after all. And we’re guessing Somara had a lot less money to work with. It’s not easy to get this kind of likeness in an edible replica. Nicely done!

CLONEHENGE

A blog about Stonehenge Replicas. We kid you not.

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