Unable to Load an Image with dlib in Python 3

Ok, so this is an incredibly weird situation that I suspect has little to do directly with dlib, but it is causing me enormous pain.

import dlib
dlib.load_rgb_image("test.jpg")

That's all. This causes a hard crash of python in ucrtbase.dll. The only information I really get is from the Event Viewer.

Faulting application name: python.exe, version: 3.6.6150.1013, time stamp: 0x5b330722 Faulting module name: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.14393.2097, time stamp: 0x5a820a13 Exception code: 0xc0000409

This error happens on any image I've tried, large, small, jpg, png, etc. I'm running Python 3.6.6 and I've tried Python 3.5.0. I'm running on Windows 10. I've run inside a virtual environment and not.

I've done a custom compilation of dlib, verified that jpg and png image processors are there. Checked the .pyd for dependencies that seem to be missing, nothing stands out.

I'm really out of ideas of what to check or try.