• About 20,000 people at Ohio University Halloween party
  • 45 ambulances called and 50 arrests on Saturday night
  • California 100-man brawl sends one man to hospital
The annual Halloween block party of 20,000 people that helped earn a university the title of best party school ended this weekend with 50 arrests.

The party near Ohio University in Athens on Saturday night saw around 45 ambulances called, with most treating revellers with alcohol-related issues.

Elsewhere, in Hollywood around 100 Halloween revellers were in a heated brawl early on Sunday morning that left one man in a critical condition.
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© KTLAHalloween brawl: A fight broke out between several costumed men in California which saw a 27-year-old man taken to hospital in a critical condition

Revellers at the Ohio event said they felt comfortable with the security level and called the event safe and fun.

Arrests in some recent years have eclipsed 200 and security has been beefed up since 2003, when party-goers rioted.

The university was voted the top party school in the 2011 Princeton Review surveys, but the institution does not sanction the event.

'Up until 3 am there were less violence reports but after that we did get a few fight calls,' an emergency services official told the Athens Messenger.

Most of the arrests were for people being drunk and disorderly, but they were also for illegal drugs possession and public urination.

The Halloween revelry dates to the 1970s. In 2003 rioting partiers lit couches on fire, started fights and threw bottles at officers and firemen.

Meanwhile over in Los Angeles, California, a fight on Hollywood Boulevard saw a 27-year-old man taken to hospital in a critical condition.

He was allegedly kicked in the head until he was left unconscious, LAPD Sergeant Mark Ro of the Hollywood police station told CBS Los Angeles.

But police had trouble identifying the attacker after they were called by paramedics because 'everybody was in costume', Sergeant Ro said.