On paper, The Curse Of Inferno looks hideous. It is, after all, not just the only Pauly Shore vehicle to make its debut on pay cable, but also a film that premiered quietly on The Movie Channel while Bio-Dome enjoyed a widespread, if not particularly lucrative, theatrical run. Shore's movies generally range in entertainment value from unwatchable to merely abysmal, but The Curse Of Inferno is, luckily, unlike anything Shore has done before. In his other films, Shore plays a variation on the slang-talking, stoner-doofus persona he popularized in his stand-up act and MTV gig. But in The Curse Of Inferno, he's called upon to play an actual character, a sweet-tempered, relatively sober pilot-turned-bank-robber whose plan to rob the First Bank of Inferno goes horribly awry when a second group of theives shows up and locks him in a bank bathroom with over $3 million of the money the bank was laundering for a corrupt millionaire (Ned Beatty). What follows is a gentle, mild, formulaic comedy, as Beatty attempts to get his money back while Shore woos a pretty female police officer (Janine Turner) who knows more about him than she lets on. While The Curse Of Inferno is nowhere near as atrocious as most of Shore's films, it seldom rises above the level of a slightly above-average made-for-cable movie. Shore doesn't humiliate himself in his first relatively straight role, but he doesn't exactly distinguish himself, either. His performance, like The Curse Of Inferno itself, is pleasant but unremarkable, and fans of his grating stand-up persona will probably be disappointed, as will viewers expecting anything more than decent late-night cable fodder. Still, those with extremely low expectations—which are, let's face it, prerequisites for anyone renting a Pauly Shore movie—should find The Curse Of Inferno to be surprisingly not horrible.