More than any other film on our list, “Lethal Weapon” hits upon an unfortunate holiday truism: The season can be depressing for reasons that have nothing to do with beefing relatives, flight delays and that elbow you took to the eye at the Apple store.  In fact, until recently, many assumed that suicide rates skyrocketed in late December as the holiday spirit drove some lonely and depressed people over the edge.  Despite the fallacy of this idea, Richard Donner’s 1987 blockbuster did its best to drive the point home.

It takes a while to get there, though. First, we have to suffer through an extremely whitebread version of “Jingle Bell Rock” and an instantly dated scene involving a bare-breasted woman hoovering up what looks a lot like cocaine before tottering off her high-rise balcony.  Was it suicide? Would we have a movie if it was?

Despite the film’s insistence on playing Martin Riggs’ (Mel Gibson) depravity for laughs, there’s no denying that the man’s in a very, very dark place. About a minute into his opening scene, he beans a beer bottle at the television and apologizes to … a photo of a woman in a wedding dress. We know he just woke up, but that’s a pretty big red flag. Just after he shows up to work, he barges into a hostage situation, calmly watches as bullets fly at his feet, lifts his weapon and blows the shooter away without a word. Do you think something might be wrong with this guy? It’s clear that the man’s unhinged, but it’s also clear that no one cares. A commanding officer makes the decision to keep Riggs in the field by muttering, “If he offs himself, then I’ll know I was wrong.” This is before Riggs shoots up a field filled with Christmas trees during a buy-and-bust operation — and before he meets his saving grace in reluctant partner Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover).

One thing that struck me watching this film is how badly Riggs needed saving. The rawest scene in the film shows Riggs tearfully putting a gun to his head and mouth as he holds that mysterious photo and Bugs Bunny sings “Deck the Halls” on his replacement television. After that, he seems to have turned a corner — as evidenced by the way he handcuffs himself to a would-be jumper and gleefully hurls himself off the ledge. As he tells the jumper, “a lotta people got problems, especially during a silly season like now.”  True indeed.

Off-color tributes to the “silly season” abound — a main character gets shot while drinking from a carton of egg nog, a police car runs over a Christmas tree inside Murtaugh’s house and Gary Busey shoots up a television showing classic holiday fare with impunity — but the film takes great pains to show that for some, Christmas just isn’t very merry at all.