.htaccess/mod_rewrite & Joomla

[lightning]

I'm trying to set up a bunch of Joomla sites on a new server that require mod_rewrite and pulls directives from an .htaccess file.

I loaded mod_rewrite and restarted apache but still every time I put this .htaccess file in the folder it spits out a 500 Internal Server Error
Has anyone ran into anything like this before on 7.5?

Thanks,
Aaron