I'm unfortunate to have missed out all the successful films of Mahendran - udhirippookkaL, muLLum malarum, nenjaththaikkiLLAdhe - I haven't seen these three:-( I lovvvve each of the songs from these movies and one day I'll see the movies too, hopefully.
The first time I saw Johny was during my III semester exams, in the college auditorium. Enjoyed the movie while still having the exams in mind. Could really relish the movie only recently when I saw it on DVD...wow! Great songs / BGM and classic Sridevi combined with a Rajini much different from his other movies!
The other Mahendran films that I've seen so far are 'metti' & 'azhagiya kaNNE' and the baby Anju film was unimpressive (may be because I went with a lot of expectations based on the magazine reports wrongly stating that "Mahendran 'The oman' mAdhirippadam edukkiRAr". May like it if I view again now without any expectations. I don't remember much about 'metti' too (except Raja songs ofcourse). I think Radhika was in the cast. ("kalyANam ennai mudikka, avasthai unakku adhigam irukku", was it deliberate?:-))
poottAdha poottukkaL, naNdu, kai kodukkum kai were other Mahendran movies with Raja and all had great songs. (I think all were BO disasters). The only Mahendran directed film without IR was 'sAsanam' produced by NFDC and released recently with Aravindsamy in the lead...had good reviews but I don't think it did well at BO and may never get a chance to view this too.
Mahendran is also credited with writing screenplays and probably dialogs for some MGR-Sivaji movies, some of which I've watched during school days, without knowing anything about him (as it was all about only MGR / Sivaji those days and none else counted -not even heroines- in my world then).
I don't think any of the metro Detroit Indian stores has any Mahendran movies except Johny. Will keep searching for his (supposedly) best 3 till I get them someday.