The Final Destination, the fourth chapter in the horror series, hits theatres this week and, while we might debate (loudly debate) the critical merit of the Final Destination movies as a whole - we'll admit - the movie is a PERFECT choice for 3D. (In case you hadn't heard, the FD series is going into the third-dimension with this movie, which we're sure will inspire a long lame succession of "A new dimension of horror" taglines). The Final Destination movies have always been just montages of semi-creative, increasingly over-the-top death scenes anyway, so taking that bombastic gore and pairing it up with the gimmicky beauty of 3D just seems like a natural fit. People go to movies like The Final Destination for quick shocks, for jolts to their system, and that's one area where 3D really delivers.

And with the new movement to retrofit classic movies with new 3D technology - it's already been done successfully with Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story 1 and 2 are coming out in 3D later this year, and you can bet your paycheck we'll have 3D Star Wars films in the next three years - it got us thinking about what famous movie death scenes we'd like to see in 3D. Sure, The Final Destination will give us car wash decapitations and explosions galore, but if we can turn ANY movie into 3D now, why settle for what the FD movies can give us in terms of three-dimensional film causalities? The Final Destination deaths are cute, but there are tons of movie deaths - even beyond the horror genre - that would look MUCH cooler in 3D. (Though horror is a pretty ideal genre for 3D - we SO want to see the Evil Dead 2 "popped eyeball" scene in IMAX 3D.) With all that in mind, here are ten picks for some amazing movie deaths that would be fantastic in 3D.

North by Northwest (1959) / Psycho (1960) - Tie

Deaths: Janet Leigh's shower scene, Detective Arbogast's fall down the stairs, Martin Landau takes a tumble off Mt. Rushmore, that poor guy in the gas truck who didn't see that bi-plane coming

Why We Want to See Them in 3D: Hitchcock might've been the most 3D-friendly director ever, even though he only ever worked with 3D for Dial M for Murder, but when looking at his canon of films, we just couldn't decide between two of his best movies that were released one right after the other - North by Northwest and Psycho. Granted, Psycho has the better deaths. Janet Leigh's shower demise is, hands-down, THE greatest movie death EVER and it would be amazing to see it with the depth of field that 3D provides (Detective Arbogast's sadly underrated fall down the Bates' staircase would be a great 3D moment too). However, North by Northwest's subject matter, tone, and pace is much more appropriate for a 3D movie and turning the final chase over Mt. Rushmore into 3D has the potential to be epic. Can you imagine really feeling the height of Rushmore as Cary Grant hangs for his life and Martin Landau spirals down to his national landmark-inspired death? Plus, as you've probably already thought about yourself, the "running away from the machine-gunning bi-plane" scene has 3D written ALL over it.

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Deaths: EVERYONE.

Why We Want to See It in 3D: Because Slim Pickens riding the H-bomb like a rodeo star, plummeting towards the end of the world as we know it, is one of the greatest movie moments of all time, and it would look staggeringly cool in 3D. Kubrick's shot of the plummeting bomb is fantastic as it stands, but the idea of being able to ride along with Slim, racing towards the explosion, and then sitting back as we watch a chorus of mushroom clouds expand out (into the theatre in 3D) to the tune of "We'll Meet Again"... it makes the dark little nihilist within all of us just sing out with joy.

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The Wild Bunch (1969)

Deaths: The Wild Bunch and about 700 Mexican outlaws

Why We Want to See It in 3D: There are lots of great movie shoot-outs resulting in death - the end of Bonnie & Clyde, the last gasps of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sonny's farewell in The Godfather, the introduction of Tony's "little friend" in Scarface - but NONE match the ludicrous scale and grandeur of the final gun battle in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. 3D does a wonderful job showing off excess - showing the depth and dimension of huge vistas, massive crowd scenes, etc. - and the finale of The Wild Bunch is all about excess. Imagine watching the three-dimensional figures of William Holden, Warren Oates, Edmond O'Brien, and Ernest Borgnine walking towards you, willingly walking towards their own demise out of sheer demented principle, and then opening up with about 900 rounds of bullets as one of the greatest movie gun battles ever unfolds around you.

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Alien (1979)

Deaths: John Hurt and his washboard abs

Why We Want to See It in 3D: Because it's the ultimate movie jack-in-the-box scare. Lots of horror movies specialize in making you jump out of your seat by having some creepy evil-doer leap out unexpectedly from behind a dark corner, but Ridley Scott's Alien takes that concept and multiples it by a million by having the scare come BURSTING out of John Hurt's frickin' stomach, while EVERYONE - audience and cast alike - sits back in stunned amazement. Sure, watching the Alien stalk through the Nostromo in 3D would be cool, but can you imagine what it would feel like if the 3D can sell the illusion of that chestburster Alien almost bursting right out into your lap? Movie theatres would go bankrupt from the expense of cleaning up after all the thrown popcorn and emptied bladders.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Death: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!

Why We Want to See It in 3D: There's several, very nerdy reasons why we'd love to see Wrath of Khan in 3D, ranging from the fact that it's still the best Star Trek movie ever (sorry J.J. Abrams) to our desire to spite George Lucas by having Star Trek 3D look much cooler than Star Wars 3D. But we have two main nerdy reasons why we want to see it - first, the whole spaceship battle in the Mutara Nebula is amazingly staged, almost more like a submarine battle than a traditional space battle. Watching tension build as the two ships silently stalk each other (and watching Khan's final death throes as he "stabs at thee" in the finale) would really look fantastic with 3D, particularly in the depth and detail that it can give to the ships. Our second reason - to paraphrase Spock, Khan loses his fight in the nebula due to his "two-dimensional thinking." So, seeing the final destruction of Khan's ship, brought about Kirk's THREE-dimensional thinking, and watching that in 3D... that's a nerd's paradise.

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)

Deaths: Mr. Creosote (maybe), Arthur Charles Herbert Runcie MacAdam Jarrett for "the crime of first-degree making of gratuitous, sexist jokes in a moving picture"

Why We Want to See It in 3D: OK, when you think of "what Monty Python movie scene would you want to see in 3D", your mind probably goes right to the Black Knight sequence in Holy Grail (though he doesn't really die - it's just a flesh wound). But Meaning of Life is filled with death and lots of gory old moments just perfect for a very subversive, oddly-hysterical 3D experience. There's the organ transplant scene, the whole "Christmas in Heaven" song following the dinner party's death by salmon mousse, and, dear lord, can you imagine watching the Mr. Creosote scene - with its gallons of vomit and subsequent explosion of said vomiter - on a fifty-foot screen in 3D? It'd be like going to a GWAR concert. But, believe it or not, the Mr. Creosote scene isn't even the part of the movie we'd be most excited about seeing in 3D. That trophy goes to the capital punishment scene, where Graham Chapman, as a prisoner sentenced to death for making sexist jokes, gets to choose how he dies and (quite wisely) chooses to be chased to his death by a platoon of topless women who run him off a cliff into his own grave. The 3D possibilities of that scene are staggering.

Rocky IV (1985)

Deaths: Apollo Creed, any sense of compassion for the Russian people

Why We Want to See It in 3D: Is Rocky IV a completely insane movie? Yes. Is it a fascinating Cold War relic, a bizarre piece of Reagan-era propaganda? Yes. BUT that doesn't mean it doesn't work. Sure, it's manipulative, strange, and politically iffy, but Rocky IV is a movie that knows how to get your blood boiling, that knows how to make you root for the good guy and hiss at the bad guy, no matter now much you really know about Cold War politics, boxing, or xenophobia. Yes, Rocky's final battle against the hilariously inhuman Ivan Drago is a great fight sequence, but the better scene for 3D would be the earlier fight where Drago kills Carl Weather's Apollo Creed in the ring, following Creed's completely over-the-top "Living in America" entrance to the fight. Fine, the movie is a guilty pleasure, but the idea of watching blow after blow hit Apollo and seeing that thrown towel flutter to the ground in 3D... that alone makes us want to invest in missile defense systems and really stick it to those Commies.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Deaths: Judy, your sense of cozy security in a sleeping bag

Why We Want to See It in 3D: This is, without a doubt, probably the most famous, most revered death scene from all of the Friday the 13th movies and it actually contains surprisingly little gore (there is an uncut version that includes more blood, but even still, way less than you'd expect). The key to this scene is shock, complete shock that you're watching what you're watching, and it's that shock factor that we think will play really well in 3D. The short version - Jason rips through a tent (nice 3D moment there) to get to Judy, who retreats into her sleeping bag. Rather than going the boring old "stabbing through the bag" route, Jason picks up the bag and begins swinging it against a tree violently, like he's beating the dust out of a rug. The effect is hilarious, shocking, unnerving, and ludicrous all at the same time, which is a nice microcosm of the Friday the 13th movies themselves. Anyway, even gore freaks list this strange death as one of their favorites and, in 3D, it'd be almost good enough to excuse how crappy the rest of the movie is.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Deaths: Gollum, the One Ring, Sauron

Why We Want to See It in 3D: You could probably make the case that any Hollywood blockbuster deserves the 3D treatment, if you're just looking at box office and FX. ("I, Robot would be perfect in 3D. Will Smith still brings in the dough and imagine all those robots swarming in 3D....") But, c'mon, there have to be standards. The Lord of the Rings movies are not only fantastic films, but they also have that depth of vision, effects, and perspective that could really utilize 3D to its fullest. And, sure, the battles would look tremendous in 3D, but imagine the emotional impact of watching a moment like Gollum's demise in super-vivid 3D. To be able to fall with Gollum as he races towards the lava of Mount Doom and gleefully burns to oblivion while holding his "precious." Yes, ten of thousands of riders on horseback would look killer in 3D, but the technology could also really sell the impact and gravity (puns intended) of a moment like Gollum's final plunge into madness.

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King Kong (2005)

Deaths: Kong, a.k.a. the beast killed by the beauty

Why We Want to See It in 3D: We feel a little ashamed of picking two Peter Jackson movies in a row, but let's face facts - King Kong's death on the Empire State Building is possibly the most iconic movie death ever, aside from Janet Leigh's Psycho demise, and the only reason we're picking the Jackson version over the original version is that we think there's probably more of a chance of Jackson doing it. Plus the final moments of Kong's life seem tailor-made for 3D - a fifty-foot gorilla hangs from the tallest building in New York, swatting away machine-gunning bi-planes, until he finally and tragically falls to his death on the streets below. It's a jaw-dropping sequence in two-dimensions, so we can't even imagine how breathtaking it would be to watch in 3D.