Richard Stanley was hired to direct "The Island of Doctor Moreau" but was replaced by John Frankenheimer after a few days of shooting. However, Stanley considered the film to be his baby (he co-wrote the script) and didn't want to leave. So he disguised himself as one of the mutants and secretly remained on the shoot.
You can watch the documentary about the shooting of this B-movie and it's full of weird details like that. It's called "Lost Soul: the doomed journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Doctor Moreau"
People may think he's crazy, but part of psychedelics is hypersensitivity. I doubt he could actually see in the dark and smell landmines, but his brain probably recognized very small details and fabricated hallucinations based on what little he did pick up on.
I sort of believe the seeing-in-the-dark thing. I was at an LSD party with my friends one night and we took a black frisbee out onto an unlit field (no moon) and threw it around without once dropping it. We just knew where everybody else was and where the disc was at all times. I dunno, maybe we could smell the frisbee.
No expertise here, but I wonder if neurons are more excitable on LSD. If every cell in your retina and optic nerve is trigger happy, you'd see more in the dark. More noise, too, I suppose.
Maybe the elevated brain energy along with the will to survive or to avoid imminent death might coerce other areas of the brain to align with survival.
Let's pause for a moment and focus on that intent: I'm going to take LSD in a war zone.
It's like the psychedelic revolution smashed right into The Right Stuff test pilot daredevil attitude. Some people truly seem to be made different than you and me.
That said, it probably wasn't one of those legendary "heroic doses", as a certain low-to-medium range (which varies from person to person) does sharpen awareness of things we normally filter out automatically.
If this guy did LSD in a war zone, he's probably done it many times before, is familiar with its' effects, a medium dose for him might be a heavy one for the rest of us... mere mortals.
I'm not saying he could smell landmines, but apparently elephants and rats can.
Though I'm assuming their snouts are fairly close to the ground.
Who knows, maybe LSD unlocks the part of our brain which can smell landmines, and he was spiderman crawling in front of the camera crew, sniffing around like a TSA dog.
That video is one of the best and oldest I can remember, from back when you saved videos to the cool videos folder because YouTube didn’t exist yet. Poor guy in the beginning having a bad trip. The soldier throwing the headphones down like “I can’t fucking do this”, cord stretched across the tree, while absolutely laughing his ass off always gets me. I wonder how many micrograms they were dosed with. Ahh, tripping in the woods.