****SPOILERS**** Beautifully tanned with a set of sparkling white teeth-like the sharks in the movie- hunk of a man Victor Mature is US Navy Lt. Cammander Ben Staves who risks his life to develop a shark repellent that can keep sharks away from their prey until help arrives. It was Staves who in fact survived a shark attack when he and his fellow shipmates were stuck on a leaking life boat that was attacked by a school of sharks in the Pacific who ended up killing and eating most of them. Now in pre-Castro 1943 Cuba he's determined to get his act together in formulating a shark repellent that can saves lives from shark attacks and is more then willing to use himself as a guinea pig to do it.It takes a while to get his crew of navy men to go along with his idea but in him always being right on target as his second in command Lt. Commander Loenard Evans grudgingly admits Staves ends up getting his way but only after one of his crew members the cocky and possibly high on pot local beach boy Carlos played by Rafael Compos,in a very similar role he played in "The Blackbord Jungle" the year before,ends up jumping off the shark hunting boat and ending up as shark bait! It's after that incident that Staves goes full blast into proving that the shark repellent he developed is worth looking into in it being mass produced for the US Navy.***SPOILERS*** Nerve wracking final with Staves in the water using himself as bait for the some dozen man eating sharks that are trying to take a bite out of him to prove him right or ending up as their main course. It's not until the repellent starts to dissipates that things get really spicy for Staves as he's forced to fight the sharks off with his knife that leads to many more sharks, smelling blood, start to join in on the feeding frenzy. In a way much better the the movie "Jaws" which just had a giant but phony looking mechanical shark in it the movie "The Sharkhunters" was far more realistic with the sharks in it being the real thing. There's also in the movie the pretty blond Karen Steele as Staves wife Martha whom he keeps out of the loop, in what he's doing, in making her think that she's only on a vacation to the Caribbean with him not in her husband risking his life for his country! P.S There's also actor James Olsen as Ensign Harold Duncan in his movie debut.

Victor Mature was self-deprecating about his acting ability, which has led to the myth that he wasn't very good. However, he's terrific in this interesting, entertaining movie about a World War II U.S. Navy commander who loses some of his crew to a shark attack and is then assigned to a research team in the Caribbean to develop an effective shark repellent. The whole cast, especially Karen Steele as Mature's wife, is excellent, and the location photography, which includes pre-Castro Havana, is beautiful. The action scenes with sharks are exciting and the outcome, given the fate of several of Mature's characters in other movies, is not certain. To top it off, Jerome Moross, perhaps the greatest of all film composers, wrote the music score. "The Sharkfighters" is well worth seeing.

Nice on scene location cinematography in Batista's Cuba is the main asset of The Sharkfighters about a wartime naval experiment trying to find a proper shark repellent for sailors in the water after a battle where their ship came out on the losing end. Whether we win or the Japanese win, sunken ships mean only one thing for the sharks, one hardy feast.Victor Mature who lost several people to sharks in the water after his ship was sunk is assigned to this project. Other on it are the man in charge Philip Coolidge who is an ichthyologist and ensign James Olson and CPO Claude Akins. They're stationed on a small island off Cuba where young Rafael Campos hangs around and makes himself useful to the navy people. The storyline conflict between Mature and Coolidge is very forced. The writers were trying to create something that should not exist. Mature is a career navy guy and Coolidge a scientist, they both had their own turf and shouldn't have been at loggerheads. After all no one here as a rooting interest for the sharks.Some tension toward the end as Mature makes the test himself of the repellent as a human subject, but we kind of know it's going to work out.Nice for the water and the scenes of Havana before Castro, but a slightly below average B film is how I would rate it.

This movie is really pushed by the phenomenal score, conceived by Jerome Moross. Victor Mature gives a solid, quite cool performance as the stereotype hero. The story is a bit thin, the finish could have been better and the supporting cast has not much space, but nevertheless it's enough to be good entertainment. Directing is handsome and the locations are pretty, the style looks sometimes a bit like documentary and that's indeed quite interesting. The scene, when the shark gets one of Matures companions is quite convincing and anyway there have been a lot of movies, where the effects around blood-thirsty animals have been much worse. As a not fully developed precursor of Spielbergs 'Jaws' this movie is definitely a recommendation.