Alfred Hitchock had a dark, deep sense of mischievous humor but when he got kinky he wasn’t kidding. The man liked his beautiful blondes chilled and terrified. Go to SIFF Cinema tonight for the double bill of Rear Window and Vertigo to see the Master work out his fetishes.

Neither film is my favorite—they’re not as much fun as North by Northwest or as romantically compelling as Notorious or as filled with light comic ease as The 39 Steps (which features my favorite Hitchcock blonde, the British ice cream cone Madeleine Carroll). But both movies play plush celluloid games of who’s-watching-who—never leaving the audience out of the implications. James Stewart is the obsessed stand-in for the director (and us) in both: He’s wheelchair-bound and spying on a murderer in the first film; in the second he stalks a mysterious Kim Novak all over San Francisco. Watching these films on a small screen at home cannot give you the full intended effect of Hitch’s fantasies.

And I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that Rear Window‘s Grace Kelly and Vertigo’s Novak never looked more ravishing (and, on a side note, the always reliable wiseass Thelma Ritter really keeps things cracking in Window). Kelly teases us with hints of the playful sexpot she secretly was in real life: At one point in the movie, she holds up a negligee to Stewart and says, “Previews of coming attractions.” Novak, for her part, looks like some immaculate, unaffordable luxury at Barney’s (fans of fashion porn should flock to this).

Don’t miss your chance to ogle on a grand scale.