I saw this film on the 20th, 2001 and i think this film is great. This is why:

As everyone knows there has been a remake (though you can not call it that when speaking to the cast it seems). As I have never seen all of the classic film I cannot compare it.

The film begins in space where the US government are training monkeys to go into space and operate small spaceships to take reading etc. We see one monkey being trained he is called Pericles when the ship finds an electro magnetic storm they monkey is buckled in and set off. Unfortunately they monkey gets lost and his trainer goes of in another spaceship to get him. He is then sucked through the storm into an unknown island where is he soon caputured along with other humans by the apes. Who then sell them to a trader who brands them and sells them on.
The spaceman and a woman are bought by a sypathetic ape who does not believe in the way they are treated. Viewers witness a young girl being sold as a pet as a present and being put on a collar and leash and kept in a cage. The sypathetic ape turns out to be the daughter of the senator who is in overall control of the island. The senators daughter has a love interest and he is in overall control of the islands army.

The spaceman escapes with the woman her family and another slave. With the help of the friendly ape and her ape guard they track down the spaceship and use a tracker to make contact with the main ship.

So off they go over mountains with the army now in control and looking for them. They have to go over sacared ground and over rivers which apes are frightened off. Once they reach the contact point all the spaceman finds is his old ship as a wreck. From footage inside the ship he finds out they they went looking for him and they crash landed, the monkeys took over the leader being an ancestor the leader of the army.

The ape army goes to kill the spaceman but by this time all the humans are there so there
is a fight just as spaceman and army leader fight another small spaceship appears it is pericles. The apes believe this is the god of the orginal leader ape returning. The apes do not believe their leader anymore and turn on him.

In the end apes and humans live happily together on the island and spaceman gets in pericles ships and heads home only to discover the apes have also taken over America.

This is a good film with an exceptionally bad ending. The cast are excellent as is the overall storyline.

I strongly sugest you go and watch this even though it has a bad ending.