I wonder what they smell like.

They smell like plastic, metal, complex hydrocarbons, and death.

To be fair, they only develop that hint of death just the once.

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"

He also directed The Color out of Space with Nicholas Cage recently.
- Good film. One of the few good Lovecraft adaptations, IMHO.
- Having enjoyed that truly good but weird movie, this story suddenly makes more sense

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.
- Your pupils get massive when you're on LSD, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're able to let in more light to let you see better.
- Was anybody smoking? We always take a drag when we want the disc in the dark, bright cherry gets the toss
- That's super cool
Contrast in the dark is far better on psychedelics, I assume because of the massive pupil dilation
- 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.
- This is essentially the point I was trying to make across, but worded better.

Petition for OP to crop the horizontal image from the vertical borders.

If you add a section to eviscerate those erroneous commas, I will sign that petition.

I wonder if his memory of 'seeing in the dark' stemmed from his pupils being extremely dilated.

Yes. But, I'm sure the visuals didn't help.
- To be fair they didn't specifically say what he saw in the dark.
  Night patrol or machine elves. He saw what he saw.

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.

Dude read about Dock Ellis's no hitter and said hold my beer and watch this
- I love that story.
Dude went full Dennis Hopper for real.

Pretty sure that's Harlan Williams.

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.

Rats definitely can (also for TB), and you can sponsor them to do so: https://apopo.org/
Magawa was a famous example: https://time.com/6138994/magawa-dies-landmines-cambodia/

Maybe somewhere in the DoD, someone is thinking of setting up an experiment on this.

Already done
- 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.
  “He himself then relapsed into laughter”
- Holy shit they gave them bazookas. Mad lads, the lot of 'em.
- Limmy: "At this point in the experiment, I had to be subdued.
  https://youtu.be/C_P4BPGclR0

Wait, you guys can't smell landmines? I thought everyone could do that!

I wish I couldn't. It's extremely distracting as I'm trying to go about my daily routine.

Shortly after that he made Hardware, a pefect Christmas movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_9tKss2_oU

I think he's dead jim
i loved that movie, way ahead of its time.

Almonds. Explosives smell like almonds. Or cow shit. Depends on the kind.

- Probably. I was just trying to set up a poop joke but no one took the bait.

Cool but please crop it next time, it's annoying on mobile.

It's not stupid, if it works.

lol!! This crazy ass. He just got lucky af.

Maybe but it would not be the first time to theorize that light doses of psychedelics may increase environmental awareness.
Stoned ape theory has hunter gatherers discover a benefit to grains with trace amounts of ergot i
Not comparable to tripping oc and the experience of smelling mines is far out but maybe there is more to it then just dumb luck.