10 Scariest Shark Movies You've Never Seen

9. Mission Of The Shark: The Saga Of The USS Indianapolis

Shark Night
CBS

While the prospect of Nicolas Cage in a shark-driven movie based around the USS Indianapolis tragedy sounded intriguing on paper, the end result - 2016's Men of Courage - was pretty darn awful, straying from the real facts, full of awful effects, and brimming with some brutal performances.

Thankfully, 1991 saw the events of July 1945 done justice more fittingly with the CBS TV movie Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the USS Indianapolis.

Headed up by the great Stacy Keach as Captain Charles B. McVay III, this isn't a shark movie in the same sense as most of the films on this list. Rather, the sharks are a background element to the wider disaster of the Indianapolis sinking after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

Yes, numerous people lose their lives to shark attacks in Mission of the Shark, but just as featured are the build-up to the torpedo attack, the sinking of the vessel, and how different people react in different ways to being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; some doing all they can to help others, others doing all they can for self-preservation.

While Mission of the Shark was hard to come by for years, nowadays it can be found on Prime Video in certain regions, not to mention the full film - albeit poor quality - on YouTube.

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Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.