According to producer Hal Roach, this film was to have been only a two-reeler, but the comedy was expanded so well that he financed the movie at twice its proposed length.
In the slang of the time "Bohunk", a conflation of "Bohemian" and "Hungarian", was a very pejorative term for a person (almost always a male). The title is a play on this word as well as a reference to the novel "Beau Geste" published in 1924 and turned into the film Beau Geste (1926). Also, sometimes "Bohunk" was reduced to "hunk"; so to call a man a hunk was not a compliment.
Filling out the ranks of the "ruffians" was composer, and head of Hal Roach's music department, Marvin Hatley. He wrote "The Cuckoo Song" which became Laurel and Hardy's theme.
Roach filmed this as a four reeler, designed to complete with the double features that theaters began offering. It turned out to be a poor experiment, as they were too long for shorts and too short for features. This was the only Laurel and Hardy comedy produced at this length, and at 37 minutes it is their longest "short" .
The chief of the Riff Raff is the film's director James W. Horne. His credit reads "Abul Kasim K'Horne (In person)". The list of "The Players" also credits "3897 Arabs, 1921 Riffians and four native Swede guides". (Of course, there are nowhere near this number of people in the film.)