Wave itself has been well documented in its native country, less has been 
said about the way it spilled over into its neighboring countries. One wild example showing a delightful mutation of this trend came from Switzerland with the French-language The Unknown Man of Shandigor (L'inconnu de Shandigor), an under the radar riff on spy movies, sci-fi capers, and even the idea of narrative cinema itself. Visually it's been likened to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville for obvious reasons along with its Jess Franco semi-sequel, Attack of the Robots (with a dash of The Diabolical Dr. Z for good measure), though there's so much going on here you could also liken it to everything from William Klein, Georges Lautner, and The President's Analyst to odd visual and narrative similarities to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 published two years earlier.
Von Krantz isn't about to give up his invention willingly though, with defenses including an unseen sea monster swirling around in a 
pool on the premises. Among the parties involved are French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg as the leader of a team of assassins called the Baldheads, Russian agent Schoskatovich (Zazie dans le Métro's Dufilho) who tortures with decadent Western pop music, and Franco mascot Howard Vernon as Bobby Gun, a former Nazi now working for the Americans. 
a 
4K restoration (using everything possible from the camera negative along with other film elements from the Cinémathèque Suisse). The gray scale and black lavels here are really lovely to behold, making this film look like it just came out of the lab. Great work all around. The LPCM 1.0 French mono track also sounds excellent and features optional English subtitles. 
director Michel Schopfer (15m59s) covers their first meetings with the filmmaker, experiences in Swiss TV and film, the possible meaning of the title, 
the casting of Emilfork (who wasn't aware of the film's comedic side at the time), the story behind Gainsbourg's big musical number commissioned by the director and written by Gainsbourg for the film, and Vernon's participation in French and Swiss productions including his prior collaboration with Jean-Pierre Melville. Finally the disc features a restoration of the very pop art-inspired original trailer, and it comes with an insert booklet featuring informative liner notes by author, musician, and filmmaker Chris D. who contextualizes the film within the Euro spy boom of the '60s while providing additional info about the major players. 