The Sharkfighters is a 1956 American adventure film starring Victor Mature, supported by Karen Steele, James Olson, and Claude Akins.

Commander Ben Staves (Mature) arrives on a tiny island offshore of Cuba to join an in-progress Navy test seeking to develop a shark repellant.

Commander Leonard "Len" Evans (Coolidge), an ichthyologist formerly with the Scripps Institution, assisted by a chemist, Ensign "Dunk" Duncan (Olson), and a cameraman, Chief Petty Officer "Gordy" Gordon (Akins).

Staves is recovering from the sinking of his destroyer in battle in the Pacific, followed by 13 traumatic days adrift during which over half his surviving crew was killed in shark attacks.

The team heads out into the bay on a small fishing boat crewed by a local skipper and a teenage deckhand Carlos (Campos).

Evans advises that the project has already tested over 200 methods, including poisons, repulsive odors, color clouds, and ultrasonics, none of which has a lasting effect in keeping sharks away from dead fish dangled in the water as human proxies.

To achieve both, Ben orders that they will work seven days a week, even though his gorgeous young wife Martha (Steele) - whom he had not seen in three years - is staying 65 miles away in Havana.

Duncan concocts a synthetic formula and adds it to their previous combination of copper acetate mixed with water-soluble wax to slow dissipation in the water.

It appears to works effectively...but so did the one without the squid ink until Carlos had panicked, stabbed a shark, put blood in the water, and set off a feeding frenzy.

The actual scientific work consisted of observations of shark behavior in 1942 off Mayport, Florida; Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and the harbor of Guayaquil, Ecuador by civilian scientists of the Marine Studios oceanarium.

[8] The Sharkfighters was filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor on location in Cuba with an opening narration by Charles Collingwood and released in November 1956 by United Artists.

While it is not known if he traveled to Cuba with the company, the distinctly ethnic themes of the music appear to be inspired by the filming on location, using syncopation and percussion instruments highly suggestive of his orchestral composition Biguine.

In the Havana night club scene he integrates a rumba into the score, then segues to a soft melody underscoring the dialogue between Martha and Len.

Sam Goldwyn Jr later said of the film, "we spent a year and a half doing the big scene and I'm afraid I didn't function so well on the story aspect.